Finally Moving Out

Our time at the Compound on 189th Street is finally coming to an end.  My sister-in-law and her family moved out of Zia's house (next door) a few months ago and now it's our turn.  My in-laws say that they are going to need grief counseling because they are going to miss us so much.  What a nice thought.  

"Marry, F***, or Kill" in Theaters Now

On Sunday, my in-laws went to a matinee performance of "Marry, F***, or Kill", an off-broadway play written and directed by the young, hot daughter of some close family friends. I've seen the play and, in all honesty, surprised myself by being seriously uncomfortable with them sharing the experience. They went, in spite of my warnings, and came home obviously disappointed, complaining that I'm a prude. My mother-in-law said that my father-in-law was particularly disappointed. 

The Voyage: The Travel Diary

My mother-in-law is withholding her travel diary of their epic summer voyage until she checks it for spelling errors and potentially embarrassing stories. She was mad that we laughed at her spelling of helicopter as elicopter.  

Locked Out

About a month after we moved in, my father-in-law began locking the door to his bedroom. Can't blame him. His grandchildren barge in at all hours often at his son's suggestion and he hates to sleep in pajamas. The side-effect is that my mother-in-law gets locked out of her own bedroom, a lot.  

The Voyage: Feeling Left Behind

In truth, we rarely see my in-laws though we are living under their roof, and on Friday when they depart on a two-month long ultra-marathon vacation we are going to lose them sadly for most of the summer. We tried to pull a trip together to meet them in Italy for a couple weeks, but the flights were too expensive. Very disappointing.


The first part of their voyage is a trans-Atlantic cruise, followed by a winding Eurorail adventure all the way to Sicily. They will be accompanied for most of the trip by their best friends, a great couple, and at other times by my brother-in-law's parents who are British. Once they reach my mother-in-law's home town in Sicily, their best friends are predictably ditching them and flying home. At which point, they will turn around and head north back through Europe to catch their ship home, crossing the Atlantic a second time. 


Not only would it be absolutely ridiculous to watch them interact with strangers all over Europe, but it would undoubtedly be an endearing depiction of Italian-Americans for the world to see. 

Our Adorable Immigrant

Today my niece gave my daughter a present so special that I welled up. It was a ball-chain necklace (like the kind of chain that comes with dog tags) with 2 charms, a beautiful little white soccer ball charm with black hearts instead of black pentagons and a tiny little silver charm in the shape of a soccer jersey with the inscription "BFF" meaning best friends forever, of course. Around the kitchen table tonight with a dozen or so of the family gathered, my mother-in-law told everyone about the beautiful charm that said, "E Effe Effe".  

Nonno's Agenda

A couple of surprising events happened tonight at the Compound. First, my in-laws were home before the kids and I were asleep. Second, my father-in-law suggested an idea for my next blog post. Momentous, I thought, he's getting used to the idea.


I was immediately thrust in the middle of a discussion between my father-in-law and my mother-in-law. Turns out that my father-in-law is ok with my blog as a form of public arbitration. Over the course of the next two hours, my father-in-law said his piece and then my mother-in-law had her turn. It was an über-complex crisscross of careful passive aggression, drawing references from a span of years. I am always amazed when they have an issue with each other because in truth, I rarely recognize one of their fights as a fight. They fight peacefully. 


I felt like they wanted my help, but I didn't dare. I just enjoyed them both near me.  

Caro Jesu Bambino

My husband and I got home from an unexpected date night to find my mother-in-law alone in her pajamas sitting at the kitchen table scribbling something on a piece of paper. This isn't unusual except for the pajamas. 


My husband greeted her by saying, "Hello Mother." She replied, "Hello Son." Then my husband said, "Those are the ugliest pajamas I have ever seen." I defended her saying, "They aren't that bad, Mammina." She gave me a smirk as I walked by to put my doggy bag away in the fridge. I tried to look over her shoulder but she blocked my view. She said she wasn't sure if it was a surprise. Apparently, my daughter had requested that my mother-in-law write down all of the words to the Italian lullaby "Caro Jesu". I've heard the song a hundred times, sung the first 20 or so times by my mother-in-law, then the next 80 or so by the two of them together. I convinced her to explain the words to me. 


In the sweet song, a young child is praying to baby Jesus. The child says that his father is a poor man and is not able to buy him a toy. The child prays for baby Jesus to come down from heaven to play with him.  

Infinite Gratitude

I'm upstairs in bed waking up from a glorious luxurious heavenly Saturday afternoon nap. The kids are downstairs trying to get out the door with my in-laws who are bravely taking four of their five grandchildren out for dinner. Our four-year-old is screaming. He's upset because my husband is trying to get him to go to the bathroom before he gets in the car. My angelic mother-in-law is yelling at our two-year-old, "Oh my God! Look what you did!" 


I can't thank them enough. 

True Innocence

I found out today that my mother-in-law doesn't know what "STD" means. 

The ADD Club

We were sitting around the kitchen table today discussing the recent trouble that went on at my husband's Final Club at Harvard. My mother-in-law called it the ADD Club, a fitting name entirely.

Scary Noises from Upstairs

Home for the summer from nursing school, my youngest sister-in-law returned to the house with one of her friends after a night out on Bell Blvd. The house was dark and quiet, which almost never happens. She said that she and her friend heard "scary noises" coming from upstairs so they hid in a very small and very full coat closet by the back door and called the cops. The cops arrived and checked out the house. They found my in-laws upstairs in their bedroom with the door locked. 

So Many Cousins

I have always felt a special connection to the wives of my husband's cousins. Because there are so many of them, someone is inevitably going through a similar stage in life or phase in childhood. When we were dating, there were cousins and girlfriends with whom to hang out with late into the night. When we were engaged, there were cousins and fiancés with whom to share wedding and honeymoon plans. When we were pregnant, there were others to compare doctor's instructions and bellies. And as the newborns arrived, we leaned on each other and shared our joys and challenges. In January, one of my husband's cousins and his brilliant and hot wife from Michigan took a cue from us and moved back into his parent's house with their four kids. 


Turns out that she shares my own inferiority complex. She said that cooking "takes a lot of confidence because everyone knows that my Mother-in-Law really is the family's best cook."A couple days ago she tweeted an imagined note to her mother-in-law, "Dear MIL - You left explicit instructions for me to cook the escarole. Happy to report... I did it!" She also tweeted last week, "Dear MIL- am I supposed to prepare a beautiful lunch and sit with the cleaning lady, like you do?"