Oh my God, you’re ME! Except I’m a dude, and my child is a boy, but other than that…
I hear you, Sister. My in-laws try to pin specifics of my child’s behavior and physical traits on their far-flung hillbilly kinfolk rather than say he might have got anything from me. No, he doesn’t have Uncle Bocephus’s jaw; he has MY jaw. No, he didn’t inherit Crazy Aunt EmmaJeanJoBob’s artistic talent; he has MINE.
According to my in-laws, the only thing my son could do that’s worse than being gay would be to grow up and marry a “nigra” woman.
That’s my father-in-law, also known as The Professor of Everything and Keeper of Universal Wisdom, as well. Whenever he starts on one of his 20-minute-long pontifications, my inner voice is screaming “Shut up! Please! God, I’m not really sure I believe in you, but if you’ll silence that old man over there I’ll devote the remainder of my life to your service!”
My mom does the same thing with our kids. I think it’s an evolutionary thing—each tribe trying to claim the new offspring as their own, or some such bullshit. Still, it drives me crazier than it does my husband, and he’s the one whose genes are being shunned.
Well, no, there was the day when she went on and on about how our daughter had the same “denim blue” eyes as her cousins (on our side of the family) and, after my mom left, he swore he would gouge our daughter’s eyes out with a grapefruit spoon if they didn’t change colors and he had to listen to that forever. Fortunately, they eventually turned brown.
I let him have it, but it did no good - the problem is that he & my mom both believe this to be true, and no amount of my telling them not to be snobs will ever change that: at best, I can perhaps convince them not to display an offensive degree of snobbery.
My wife is smart and knows all of this, and is certainly willing to make allowances for my aged parents: but it rankles, even though my parents are always perfectly nice towards her (their view appears to be that her evident smarts & education is all the more admirable, comming from such a background).
My sympathies on the gifts and other frustrations. I’ve developed a happy peace with the fact that my MIL does not buy me gifts. I get a very small Christmas present if they are feeling flush (They almost never have money) and I have never received a birthday present from them. Of course, their son hasn’t gotten a birthday present from them since we got married either. I’m ok with this though, because she and I have extremely different taste and she has no clue. One year, early in my marriage, she got me a kit for sewing an over sized vest. It had bird houses on it. With cute birds. and flowers. I felt obligated to actually make the darn thing and then wear it. I would rather never get another gift from them than appear in public in another bird house vest.
They are lovely people, though, even if I refuse to give them my e-mail address so they can’t send me e-mail forwards.