EPISODE WITH MOTHER-IN-LAW

Mothers-in-law are hard to manage.

You have to please them. You have to amuse them. You have to be their friends.

I know it is hard. How can one treat one's mother-in-law as a friend when she is actually half of a mother?

I know it is hard.

It is even tougher to address her as "mom" when she is actually not.

After my episode of the 45 minutes lecture by my mother-in-law, we met up a couple of days earlier for a dinner.

Initially, the situation was very tense, tenser than the times I was just about to give my speech in front of 300 people.

You can never image that kind of pressure put on yourself, unless you have a mother-in-law like mine.As my sister-in-law was telling us over the phone they were walking towards the restaurant, my adrenaline was pumping faster.

I couldn't breathe.

When she came, she was as expressionless as ever. However, a silent lake runs deep. You never know what were the thoughts in her mind.

The first thing to do is to greet "mommy" and then "daddy". The sequence makes a big difference.

The courtesy to see guests coming, especially my in-laws is to stand up till they are seated down.

The next step is to put food into their plate, partially because they have something pleasant to eat and won't talk so much.

The heart-warming thing to note was that actually things didn't turn out to be as bad as what we had imagined.Of course, there were some mild exchanges of gun fire but it was very mild and subtle.

The rest of the evening was filled with laughters and alot of catching up.

It is not easy. I can fully empathise with those who have really unreasonable parents-in-law who purposely blow small matters really big!The key solution is just to be more tolerant