The Question of a Mother

Today I lost my charm with my mother in law.  Usually I hold my tongue but this was something I just could not let go.  

Diego was snuggling with my sister in law, Donella.  He is very affectionate with almost everyone, but he is particularly affectionate with her.  It pleases me that he is getting that important female attention from a special person in his life.  He has a handful of women that take a special interest in him, be it friends, aunts, and of course, his grandmother.  This was our intention.  This was by design.

He got up to do something in another room, and my mother in law said to my Donella in an offhand way, "He needs his mother doesn't he?"  I stopped in my tracks.  I turned around and gave her a puzzled, perturbed look. But I left the room and came back a minute later.  Then I could see that Giancarlo was angry.  He told me his mother had said to Diego's godmother, Claudia, "Why don't you marry Giancarlo or Jason so Diego can have a mother?"

Upon hearing this addition, I blew up. I stood in front of her while she sat on the couch, knitting in her lap.  I yelled because she can't hear otherwise.  I yelled because I was angry.  "What?!  How could you say something like that?  We have purposely  surrounded him with special women who give him female attention that he needs.  People like you, and Donella, and Claudia, who are very wonderful and important to him.  But for you to say that he needs a mother is like saying that the two of us are incompetent as parents, that we shouldn't be his parents. A child needs two parents who love him and take care of him.  That's the bottom line."  She tried to shrug her comment off and chuckled saying she was just joking.  I would have none of that.

Never once in Diego's life have we ever heard a comment of this sort from anybody that we know.  It sounded like it could have come right out of Ann Coulter's mouth.  Or any other homophobe's mouth.   And to have it come out of Diego's grandmother's mouth was a shock.

You don't need to talk to me about the importance of mothers.  My mother was everything to me.  But it wasn't because she was my mother.  It was because she was warm, nurturing, and affectionate.  It was because she guided me with love.  She meant everything to me because she gave me what I needed and asked for nothing in return.  All of this could just as easily come from my dad, although it didn't for the most part.

*
The above has all since blown over.  Water under the bridge.  Dirt under the rug, whatever.  But whenever something like this happens I become just one bit more disenfranchised.