This seemed like an obvious next step, mainly because I’d had “start exercising again” on my own to-do list for quite a while. Back in high school I was an all-state track-and-field athlete, and I’d managed to push myself through a sporadic smattering of half marathons over the past five years—emphasis on sporadic—but it had been awhile since I’d had a consistent workout routine. Getting back in touch with my inner athlete would be like visiting an old friend, a friend who made me feel energetic, confident, and strong.
Paying for “a few sessions with a trainer” sounded absolutely lovely, but Michael and I weren’t really in the financial position to hire a pro to “help to jump-start” my routine. That said, the suggestion to “try practicing yoga” sounded perfect. Not only did I hopefully have the vestiges of my last yoga practice hiding out in my muscles, but I knew that the stress-relieving effects of a few sun salutations might do me wonders in preparing me, mentally, for hosting the upcoming visit from Michael’s mom.
Hanna had managed to score a great online coupon deal for a local yoga studio that I’d missed out on, but the studio still offered a negligibly affordable discount of three sessions for twenty dollars for new clients. Although $6.66 per workout was embarrassingly unsustainable for me in the long term, I figured it would be well worth the experience of getting back into yoga in the company of someone I wanted to spend more time with, anyway. Hanna and I made ourselves a yoga date.
Of course, I found myself out of breath and sweating before the class even began. I was running three minutes late, after having aggressively weaved through rush-hour traffic, cursing at pokey drivers like the totally un-Zen yogi that I was. Hanna, bless her, had arrived early and reserved a neighboring mat for me while she waiting with mild embarrassment (she has always been the responsible one). I plopped down ungracefully and cautiously looked around, prepared to avoid eye contact with myself in a room full of mirrors. Much to my delight, the room was completely mirror-free! It turned out that the owners of the studio felt that yoga ought to be more about the experience of feeling your body and less about looking at it. I’d practiced yoga on and off over the prior years, and this was a first! Not only was it convenient for my no-mirrors pledge, but it turned out to be really nice.
Based on what I saw while watching my sister, I probably looked completely ridiculous. We were instructed to “fold over” into Uttanasana (intense standing forward fold pose), and I realized, with dismay, that my stomach folds were preventing the act of folding. And yet I didn’t feel the least bit self-conscious. If Hanna could flail around ungracefully and still be loved by her sister, so could I. At the end of the session, we’d both conquered headstands against the wall. Namaste, bitches! It was awesome.
Leaving the yoga studio, I caught a partial glimpse of my flushed face reflected in a mirror that had been tucked into a corner of the studio office. I don’t remember details of what I looked like, other than very pink, but I remember that I felt happy.
Feeling sufficiently relaxed from our yoga class, I gulped back my anxiety and asked Hanna to come over to help me weed through my clothing selections from earlier that week.
“Wait, you want me to help you pick out clothes?” she asked. “This is a first.”
“I’m desperate,” I conceded, which made us both laugh.
Asking my sister for help picking out clothes—and actually trusting her opinions—ended up being fun. After it was all said and done, I kept three of the seven shirts and returned the other four. But had I learned from the experience? Would I allow myself to trust other women? Ugh, why am I such a control freak?
Well, this control freak was about to meet her match. Michael’s mother, Sherry, was due to arrive the next day for a visit. Michael hadn’t been able to get time off until the end of the week, so it would be up to me to entertain her over the next few days.
Mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationships are known to be complex. James George Frazer, one of the founding fathers of modern anthropology, once declared that “the awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.” My relationship with Sherry was no exception. Awe and dread. Yep, that sounded familiar.
The awe I had for Sherry was rooted in our similarities, which included both of us being bossy, outspoken, and—of course—quite attached to Michael. The dread I felt about spending time with Sherry rested in our differences. To put it plainly, Sherry and I stood on opposite sides of almost every issue that we both cared deeply about.
Our political difference alone would have been enough to raise any future daughter-in-law’s blood pressure, but there was more. Like me, Sherry had dealt with some serious body image issues during her life. However, unlike me, instead of trying to change her mind, she’d opted to change her body (and several times at that) through dieting regimes and a handful of cosmetic procedures. Sherry was completely open about this and had gotten at least one face-lift, a few rounds of breast augmentation (first implants, and then reconstruction after she survived breast cancer), and was a regular Botoxer.
I didn’t know exactly what to make of all this, but it worried me to wonder what Sherry thought about my body. Sherry had always gone out of her way to be kind to me, but every so often she put her foot in her mouth regarding my looks, usually by presuming that I was on a diet or wanted to lose weight. Even though we got along well, I was pretty sure she wished her son was marrying a thinner (and more politically conservative) woman. Sherry’s visit would be the first time we’d be spending a lot of time together, just the two of us. I worried that our differing approaches to beauty and vanity might derail the progress I had made.
“You’ll be fine, Sweet Pea,” Michael insisted. “Just avoid talking about politics or dieting, and focus on things you have in common.”
“She doesn’t even believe in global warming!” I whined.
“Maybe so, but that doesn’t make her a bad person, just . . . quirky,” he insisted. “Besides, you’ve got your own quirks, too. Just go shopping together or something. If you can hang in there for three days, I’ll be around to take over the major hosting responsibilities. It’ll be fine, I promise.”
The following morning I spent a few hours cleaning our apartment, with my eyes on the clock. Sherry was due to arrive downtown by early afternoon. Since Michael had taken our car to work, she’d bravely offered to take public transportation from the airport to Union Square. At eleven thirty, I received a text from her letting me know that she was on the train, so I slipped out of our apartment to begin my walk downtown. I told her I was on my way and hurried.
Union Square is a major tourist attraction, and it was crowded. It took a few minutes before I spotted Sherry standing with her suitcase mere yards away from some tap-dancing street performers.
“Sherry!” I shouted. “Over here!” I saw her look up and spot me. She waved at me with a smile and started heading in my direction. We met in the middle, and we shared a big hug.
“I’m so glad you’re here! How are you?” I asked. As usual, she looked great. Bobbed blond hair carefully styled, subtle makeup, perfectly manicured nails, and a chic outfit. When I traveled, I usually wore stretch pants and Ugg boots, but Sherry always looked put together.
“Oh, I’m great! I can’t believe the weather is so nice here. When I left Louisville it was eighty-five degrees already, at nine in the morning!” she replied in her slight southern accent.
We both turned to start walking back toward my and Michael’s apartment, and a block later we almost bumped right into a large sign standing on the sidewalk. It read SALE in huge bold letters and stood right outside of my all-time favorite store: Anthropologie. I’d spotted it earlier and was secretly hoping that we’d stop inside. I knew that Sherry was also an Anthro fan and thought we might as well start off the week with something we had in common.
“Oh my gosh, I love Anthropologie!”
she squealed, adding, “And a sale, too!” We charged in, dropping off Sherry’s luggage at the front cash register without slowing down on our race to the racks! In a moment of bliss-induced generosity, my future mother-in-law said those beautiful words every young woman wants to hear: “If you find a top that you like, I’d love to buy it for you!”
If I could find a top I like? I’d already seen about four, and that was just one layered outfit done on a mannequin!
Skilled hunter/gatherers that we were, it didn’t take long before both of us had accumulated heavy armloads of potential purchases. We traveled to separate-but-across-from-each-other fitting rooms (sharing would have been weird, no?) and proceeded to try things on. And that’s when things started to get a lot more interesting than my experience at Ross.
It turned out that I had no problem trusting Sherry’s opinion. Instead, I desperately wanted it. I believed her to have great taste in clothes, fashion, and flattering fit.
I was trying on my first top, an olive-colored sequin-embellished sleeveless blouse with an attached matching scarf. It was beautiful, but I couldn’t tell if it fit well.
I called to Sherry from across the fitting room to request an opinion. She asked me to wait a second and then emerged from her own room. We were wearing the exact same top (I told you she’s got excellent taste), and it looked great on her. We had a good laugh, and she told me the top was flattering on me as well.
We both hit the shopping jackpot that day. Sherry bought several tops and a pair of great denim capris. I left with five (five!) new tops, all on sale, and Sherry actually treated me to two of them. She said she couldn’t bear to buy one of the shirts without its coordinating sweater. I’d had a ton of fun and felt touched by her generosity. We’d managed to get through the whole afternoon without talking about anything remotely challenging. I could only hope we’d be able to keep it up.
But a nagging voice inside my head bothered me. Getting along fabulously with Sherry had been a relief, but it surprised me that I trusted her taste in clothes so much more easily than I’d trusted my sister. What did it say about me that I trusted the opinion of someone who intimidated me more than the opinion of someone I felt completely comfortable with? Why was this? Did I think we shared the same taste in clothing? Or was something else going on? I knew that I was uncomfortable with Sherry’s choices to diet and to have plastic surgeries, but for some reason, knowing how much she cared about her own appearance made me trust her stamp of approval over all others. An uncomfortable realization presented itself: I trusted Sherry precisely because I believed her to be a particularly discriminating critic. If Sherry approved of something, I knew it must surpass the standards of pretty much anyone else (including myself). But was this trust, or simply mistrust (of everyone else) in disguise?
• • •
THE NEXT DAY WE ENDED UP GOING SHOPPING AGAIN. IF IT ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? This outing involved a trip to a fancy-schmancy department store in hopes that we might find some wedding jewelry I liked. Sherry—a retired high school art teacher who makes beautiful handmade jewelry as a hobby—had generously offered to design and make my wedding jewelry. I was pretty excited about this! After walking through the jewelry section and finding nothing to our liking, we began to make our way to the exit. Just then, Sherry saw the sales stand for a skin care line I’d never heard of.
“Oh my gosh! I know the plastic surgeon that invented this skin care line! He’s from Louisville, Kentucky. The products are amazing. And very expensive—like liquid gold.” Intrigued, we went over to take a look. Liquid gold, eh? My current skin care routine didn’t involve many precious metals, save for the trace mercury levels in our water supply.
The sales representative manning the booth looked like a petite version of supermodel Agyness Deyn, all stunningly androgynous with white-blond short hair and pale-yet-glowing skin.
“Welcome,” said Agyness Deyn 2.0, whose real name, according to her tag, was Beth. “Have you tried our products?”
“Oh yes!” said Sherry. “Actually, I personally know the doctor who invented the line! I’m from Kentucky and so is he. He’s brilliant! I love your products.”
“That’s wonderful! And you?” Beth asked, turning to me.
“I’m just learning about it, actually. My skin is sensitive, so I don’t usually try new products,” I responded truthfully. Several mirrors rested on the display shelf. I edged back and started eyeballing the products to keep myself focused away from my reflection. The bottles of serums and cleansers and lotions and potions looked enticing, but at $250 for a teeny tub of eye cream, there was zero chance of purchase.
“Oh, don’t you worry, everything was designed for sensitive skin. The products were designed to help your skin heal after peels and surgeries, right? Do you have any samples?” Sherry asked, turning back to Beth.
“Of course! We’d love for you to try our products,” Beth exclaimed. She turned around and started fishing through a few drawers behind the counter. Sherry turned to me with a sly grin and winked.
Beth returned and handed me a dozen or so small packets of various potions. “First you use the skin oil, then the cleanser, then the toner, then the serum, and finally the moisturizer. There’s one for daytime and another for night, and don’t forget the eye cream. Pat it on, don’t rub. I don’t see too many wrinkles yet, but they’ll sneak up on you if you aren’t careful!”
I was surprised and delighted. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d received so many free samples without first buying something. I thanked Beth profusely and we headed on our way.
As we walked away from the store, Sherry, who had been silent since asking for the samples, turned to me and said, “Well, she was certainly right that you don’t have many wrinkles! Whatever you’re using already must be working. Not so for me. At my age I have to really bring in the big guns.”
I wasn’t sure exactly which “big guns” she was referring to, although staple guns came to mind. Sherry had made no secret of her various cosmetic procedures. Indeed, on the first day we’d met she’d brought up the subject of breast implants while we sat next to each other at a minor-league baseball game. Originally, Sherry’s implants had been “way bigger,” but they’d been removed, and her breasts reconstructed, for her breast cancer treatment several years back. “Before the implants I barely had enough for a mammogram,” she’d explained while we sat drinking beers at the baseball game. “That’s when I decided to get them fixed, right then and there during my mammogram. I’d never been so embarrassed in my life.” I must have looked worried (I hate it when women talk about “fixing” their bodies, as though their functional but aesthetically challenged parts were literally broken or defective), because her next words were of comfort: “Oh, don’t worry, you’re proportionate!” she offered. I summoned up a weak “Thank you” and quickly changed the subject.
I shook the memory from my mind and tried to focus on the present. Sherry was still talking. “So anyway, that lady was really generous to give you so many samples. I guess she only gives samples to people who haven’t already tried their products.” It suddenly clicked. Damn it, she wants my samples! Female competition shows up in the most surprising little ways. But there was only one thing to do, and I knew it.
I offered the samples to Sherry. “I think you’d enjoy these more than I would,” I said. “They’re the perfect size for traveling. Besides, with this whole no-mirrors thing I wouldn’t even be able to see if they made any difference, anyway!”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that! They’re yours,” Sherry countered, but I knew how this worked; I’d watched Michael dance this dance many times.
“No, I insist. Really,” I replied firmly. As I said it, I realized that Sherry would, indeed, enjoy the samples more than I. Their allure gave way to the gratification of knowing that I was doing the right thing by giving them up. And, really, they were samples of face cream. How
could they possibly be worth making my future mother-in-law feel slighted?
“Well, if you insist,” she acquiesced, clearly delighted. “Thank you so much, that was very generous.”
“No problem!” I responded, pleased with myself. How strange, I thought. Counter to my expectations, the two of us had been getting along really well. Maybe my anxieties about Sherry were more in my head than in reality.
• • •
THE FOLLOWING DAY SEEMED LIKE AN IDEAL TIME TO CROSS off item #1 from TheKnot.com’s BBCTG list, which instructed me to “Begin a stress-relief regimen. Reserve at least one night a week for some non-wedding fun or quiet time to regroup.”
I laughed to myself as I read this. I wondered, Does anyone actually spend every night of the week doing their wedding planning? Come on! I doubted it. Maybe it was true for people with ambitious plans and very short engagements, but for most of us this would be overkill.
I suspected that TheKnot.com was applying a bit of sneaky reverse psychology; despite urging me to take “at least one night a week” away from wedding planning, this to-do task subtly implied that near-constant wedding planning was the norm, perhaps even necessary or expected. Research shows that the longer a shopper stays in a store, the more she is likely to spend. This is why milk and eggs—the most common grocery list items—are always buried in the back of grocery stores, so you have to pass by a ton of other things you may be tempted to buy. Weddings must be like that, too; the more time we spend thinking about them, the bigger and more expensive they become.
Reverse psychology or not, I was happy to comply with most of TheKnot.com’s instructions for this particular task. Having played hostess to my future mother-in-law over the prior few days, I was definitely in need of a “stress relief regimen,” and I craved “quiet time to regroup” with the intensity of an addict in her first few days of rehab. Having some “non-wedding fun” sounded great, too.
Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall Page 11