"Are you going to eat ALL of that??" Tales From My Married Life...
My MIL (mother-in-law) used to comment about EVERYTHING I ate. She once called me a "healthy eater" in her condescending Southern belle drawl, with the implication that I wasn't being a "proper Southern woman" by helping myself to seconds. Her incessant questioning of my food choices and her passive-aggressive quips about my portion sizes were rude, infuriating, and bizarre, given the exquisite shape I was in. But I would slap on a pained smile as I silently suffered through another family dinner I was required to attend. Of course, my (now ex) husband thought the whole thing was hilarious. Sadistic fucker.
Eating with my MIL and FIL (father-in-law) was a nightmare. This woman ate like a fussy toddler. She'd spend 30 minutes poking at and around her food, ate nothing but chicken fingers when we went out to restaurants, cooked vegetables until they were a limp, flavorless memory of their former selves, and cooked meat until it was unpalatable shoe leather. Mayonnaise wasn't a condiment in this family; it was a food group, and simple black pepper was "too spicy" for them. She'd take two bites of her bland, beige, colorless, flavorless meal, wrinkle her nose, and claim she was stuffed. If I made dinner, she'd pick out all the "weird" ingredients with this indignant look on her face, like I was trying to poison her. She never tried anything new, often insulting the ingredients without even knowing what they were or how they tasted.
Her idiot husband, my FIL, was the polar opposite and ate like a glutton. It was vile watching him gorge himself with his dentures in his front shirt pocket, hoovering everything in sight as if he would never see food again. We once went to a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse for my graduation party after I completed dental hygiene school, where he proceeded to embarrass the shit out of me by loudly insisting on having A-1 Steak Sauce for his massive filet mignon. They didn't have any, obviously, because A-1 is used to cover bad cuts of cheap meat, not prime steak that costs $150 a plate. He ate so much that my mother and I were honestly concerned he would have a heart attack.
The first (and last) time I made Thanksgiving dinner for my entire family (around twenty people), I went all out. I bought a massive, local, farm-raised, free-range turkey that cost a small fortune. I stuffed the bird with aromatic vegetables and fresh herbs I had grown myself, then lovingly packed fistfuls of seasoned butter under the skin like I was the reincarnation of Julia Child. I peeled at least two dozen potatoes and mashed them with salt, butter, and cream until they were perfectly smooth. I made cranberry sauce from scratch, simmering the sour little fuckers with sugar, orange zest, and a tiny dash of horseradish until it had the perfect balance of sweet and tart. I used the turkey neck and gizzards to make nearly a gallon of gravy as my husband hovered over my shoulder, scrutinizing my every move as the self-appointed gravy man in our house. He was a hateful bastard, but, to give credit where it's due, the man knew how to make a damn good gravy.
At my father's and brother's request, I made traditional green bean casserole and had a growler of local beer ready in the fridge. Finally, I steamed broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower with butter to make an easy, fresh vegetable side dish that required no thought or preparation. I had several wine selections, all carefully chosen to pair with dinner and dessert. Three pies: pumpkin, apple, and pecan—were made by yours truly the night before from scratch. I labored in the kitchen for 48 straight hours and spent over a thousand dollars putting this meal together because, dammit, I was the new wifey and I was going to prove how badass I was to my parents and my in-laws. I was exhausted, but everything was absolutely fabulous, and I couldn't help but be proud of everything I'd made with my own two hands.
All that work, everything made fresh with precision and care, and you know what my in-laws raved about? THE FUCKING STEAMED VEGETABLES. The one thing I had put zero effort into. The one thing I used the microwave for because I ran out of burners on the stove. The one thing I made as an afterthought and didn't give a shit about. They complimented NOTHING ELSE. I wanted to reach over and take out both sets of their dentures and toss them into the backyard for my dogs to shit on. My MIL liked that boring vegetable medley so much that she made it at every family dinner I was I attended until I finally divorced their demonic hellspawn, and insulted me further by over-steaming the poor things until they were pale, stringy snot that I refused to eat.
I'm tall (5'8"), naturally thin (size 2, 120 lbs), with a genetically high metabolism like my father. But back when I was married, I was also doing HIIT workouts (high-intensity interval training) two hours a day after work, six days a week, and was built like a brick shithouse. I was 135 lbs, lean, defined, cut down to 13% body fat with an ass you could bounce a quarter off of. My husband was 6'4" and 230 lbs of hateful man meat that liked to knock me around, so I trained like my life depended on it (which became a reality at several times during our marriage, although no one knew this at the time).
But that's why this woman's comments and concern for my figure were so baffling to me. I ate healthily, but the portions were not small. But visually, my body was perfect: I had rippling biceps, flat, 6-pack abs, gravity- defying boobies, elegant, prominent clavicles, chisled calf muscles that could cut glass, hard, round shoulders, and shapely quads that demanded fuel—and they would not be denied. There was absolutely no reason for this woman to be concerned about my weight. Still, she openly disapproved of my "unladylike" demeanor because I ate my food without worrying it to death, shared my opinions openly, and wouldn't let my (now ex) husband (her son) boss me around and be "the man of the house." Yeah, fuck that and your misogynistic, Dixie darlin’ attitude, there, pookie. I'll eat whatever I damn well please.
So, lady, disrespectfully, fuck you very much.
And yet…
I hate to admit one of my proudest married moments was when I made lasagne (my mother's recipe), and that persnickety, twiggy twatwaffle ate the entire portion I served to her and told me how good it was. The. Entire. Thing. I had never, EVER seen this woman finish what she had on her plate. It felt like I'd just won the Oscar for Best Actress in a psychological thriller.
…Then she asked if I really needed that second helping of victory I'd just returned to the table with, utterly ruining my moment of triumph.
All these years later, I still feel like I won, thinking about how jealous my ex-sisters-in-law all were in that moment. But I'm so glad I never have to see that awful family ever again.
