An Apology To My Future Daughter-In-Law

To The (I'm Sure) Lovely Woman Who Will Someday Marry My Son,

You, my dear, are very blessed. Nowhere on Earth will you find a boy more loving, more devoted than my son. Do you ever get headaches? My son will gladly give you a massage to ease your pain. He will gift you an army of robots, handmade from a variety of materials. Put your broom away, honey -  my boy will eat every morsel that dirties your floor. And you, my dear girl, will never vacuum under the sofa cushions like your friends. My son will consume the detritus in your couch for a snack while he watches football. He's only 7, but these are traits that will follow him his life through.

His sweet nature, eyes of a summer sky, and Bill Clinton grin will go a long way to your looking past his foibles. I'm hoping this letter will take you the rest of the way.

For you see, my darling Daughter2 (may I name you Daughter2 for my blog? Yes? Why, thank you!), my big man is also disgusting.

I blame it on the sex I had to procure his existence. Now, I know what you're saying. Gross, right? I don't need to know about my in-laws sex life, am I correct? Well, Daughter2, I know tons about my parents' sex life, and more than a bit about about my in-laws'. And grandparents. And grandparents-in-law. Even a great-aunt's.

But I don't want to completely frighten you away.

I too felt, once upon a time, that I did not need to know such things. But I have a wonderful relationship with all four of my parents - biological and inherited. I therefore believe that the knowledge of their sex lives is a critical component of forging such attachments. Didn't Arthur, in order to become king, come to know of Uther's treachery and demise, all to bang Arthur's mother? Yes. And so shall you, so shut up.

You see, Son's sister was the product of my Type A Personality baby planning. I believe this has contributed to her rather intense personality. But I'm intense too, you say? You think it might be genetic? You would be wrong. As wrong as the way you load your dishwasher, so let's move on.

Son, on the other hand, is the result of a more lackadaisical approach to child breeding. We were free-wheeling. We had a devil-may-care attitude and a toddler. Procreation happened whenever and wherever we could make do. A baby arrived. My big man. Now your man. He is most certainly a snips-and-snails boy, with all the mess you'd expect from something made by a creature that leaves a trail of ooze wherever it goes.

There is, of course, the stereotypical little boy refusal to be clean. Hygiene is anathema to his existence. I have tried, unsuccessfully, to glorify the virtues of cleanliness. But cleanliness is next to Godliness and he hates religion too, so where does a mother go from there?

And his collections. I get it. People collect things. Baseball cards. Old newspapers. Cats. My son collects nail clippings. I feel like I shouldn't have to explain that normal people don't collect nail clippings. But I do have to explain it, every single time I clip his nails. And yet he still secrets away the clippings, stashed between his fingers. I don't know where he keeps his collection. I don't want to know. I'd rather know how the maggots got in his bedroom.

Yes, you read that correctly. Maggots. He had a nature collection in a shoebox on his bedroom dresser. I looked in the shoebox. I don't know why. Optimism? Stupidity? It doesn't matter. I still saw what I saw. Maggots, small and pearly, flopping over the dessicated leaves and dirt coated rocks. Maggots also surrounded the shoebox and wiggled on his carpet. Do you know how long it takes to wash every piece of laundry, every linen, every stuffed animal? How long it takes to throw away anything that can't be washed, clean every surface, vacuum until your skin no longer crawls? Eight hours. I'll help you when your time comes. Perhaps we can cut it down to four. If you listen to me.

Oh, and sometimes he looks like the kid
that tried to kill Kiefer in Flatliners. Or the
thing that tried to kill Donald in Don't Look Now.

I believe the maggots would have died anyway; he is either the source of the next penicillin or the next global super plague. His daily mouth-on-mouth kisses with our elderly dog I can't help but think contributed to her demise. I once - once - ate a piece of cake from the same fork as him. I wound up with the flu. Even though I had a flu shot. Last week, he tried to get me to drink from the same straw as him. When I refused, he gave me his best Peter Venkman grin. He said he thought we had a relationship. Don't ever let him used car salesman you into sharing food. Your life is already in jeopardy given the natural marital exchange of body fluids.

When ringworm spread through the preschool his first year there, he was the source. When ringworm spread through the preschool his second year there, he was the source. He was on an antifungal for years, and kindly passed the ringworm to his sister and me. Now he has warts. Warts. On his legs. I don't know whether to autoclave him or sell him to a pharmaceutical company.

And the brown streaks. Oh, the brown streaks. He loves chocolate. And mud. And pooping. He does not like to wash his hands (see "Hygiene", above). And so you will never know if that cocoa streak on the wall is food, dirt, or what's behind Door Number 3. My advice is to just clean it and wash well after. You can make him clean it, but he just spreads the mystery mark like the pink spot in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.

So good luck, Daughter2. I have tried so very hard to make him better for you. But as my mother-in-law told me after I married his father, you bought Son and there are no returns. My mother-in-law always sides with me, and I will try to do the same for you. I can make no promises. She is a better person than I, and I like the way she loads her dishwasher.

Wait, where are you going....?