Different strokes
It's been so interesting lately to reflect on differences between people. As a teacher I've had to learn a lot about cultural differences, both from textbooks and through sometimes awkward incidents of trial and error. But there are so many differences between people, too! That should be obvious. It is obvious. But I'm still surprised.
Like, Ben's dad said a couple weeks ago that he wondered how many billions of pounds Americans have collectively gained in quarantine. And I *knew* about the "quarantine fifteen" and stress eating and sales of junk food going up. But I was still surprised and baffled, since I actually lost weight *while pregnant* from taking extra care to eat healthfully to help me *actually* feel good as well as rationing to prevent nonessential trips to the grocery store. If people were so serious about staying at home, why were they scarfing down so much food?
And I totally *just* broke my own habit of stress eating in 2019. Like, I KNOW HOW THIS WORKS. Why is it so hard to really digest other people's experiences?
Haha. "Digest."
Hahahahahahahahahaha!
Anyway. Similarly with other conversations. Trying to make pleasant conversation with my mother-in-law, I asked her about some of her silver linings from all these shutdowns.
"SILVER LININGS?!" she exclaimed, with some tone of horror. I wondered if maybe she had misheard me, but she did repeat my words accurately. Or maybe we had different understandings of the phrase?
But yeah. She didn't have any. She was kind of nominally glad that there's less pollution from people driving less, once she thought about it for a while. But she lives alone. She went months without a hug. She worries and reads and talks about Covid a LOT (much less during her visit here, thankfully... she feels like life is normal again here <3), but ventures out more than, say, my parents, who are locking themselves down completely. My parents aren't, like, the greatest company for each other, but they do have each other.
And she ventures out more than me, even though she is clearly more worried about Covid than I am (though I am way too young to get permanent damage from that Covid $#!&, I tell you that). But the details of everyone's lives are so diverse, I can't assume to really understand anybody.
Like, anybody. Hubby and I had an at-home date night last night (scrapping plans to go out for some outdoor dining because it's like 110 degrees outside), and he got super annoyed that I didn't want to watch Shawshank Redemption. It took like three conversations to clarify that one, and we learned a little bit more about each other after almost 13 years of knowing each other.
We watched Sunset Boulevard, the first time for each of us, and it was AWESOME.
Anyway. It's my mother-in-law's last weekend here, and she's spent much of her visit just doing our dishes and helping my daughter deep clean her bedroom (which took DAYS and with which my daughter somehow eagerly cooperated. For us if we ask her to, like, put her laundry in her hamper, she will start sobbing and then flop around like a dying fish moaning for twenty minutes and then start crying again.). I asked MIL what she *likes* to do on a visit, and what she'd like to do this weekend, and she just stared at me with an utterly baffled look on her face for a minute or two.
She *likes* to do chores and stuff like this. She says it's her love language. And a sort of family tradition, with her own mother and MIL and grandmother doing the same sorts of things whenever they came over.
When *my* grandma came over, we'd spend the day playing 500 rummy.
That was a tough transition from years ago of being a guest among the houses of my husband's family, and it frankly still makes me feel like I'm walking on eggshells: in his family, guests help out so much that they make the host feel glad that they are there. In my family, guests were to be shown a good time and in return all that was asked was to not touch anything. The host's house is sacred and not to be meddled with.
I used to get irritated with MIL's help, I'll be honest, but now I'm OK with it. Especially my daughter's room. I want to take her out for a steak dinner for that one. And I don't even like steak.