The Blessings of a Daughter-in-Law

So far, 2019 is shaping up to be one of my best years ever. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to the little hints I’ve dropped in my previous columns, my son Robby got married in February to a wonderful young woman named Melody. We had not one, but two weddings (technically a wedding & reception in California and a second reception in Michigan). Both events were fun, but the real fun has been the “having a daughter-in-law” part. I used to say that because I lived in a house with all males, that our pets had to be female to balance things out. Not even close! If you live in a house with all males and haven’t gotten a daughter-in-law yet, let me tell you that it’s a real treat. There are just certain things that come along with having a human female join the family. For starters, the gift-giving is a blast. Melody was in the fiance’ stage when Christmas rolled around, and I’m not exaggerating when I admit that she probably got double the gifts that the boys got because, well, it’s just more fun to shop for a girl. Before her birthday, I studied her style of clothes and picked out something I thought she’d wear and, SCORE! She liked it, AND she wears it! Melody likes to do things I like to do like clean eating, going to the beach, and working out. She likes to dance too, but she’s a real dancer and I’m more like Elaine Bennis from Seinfeld. We don’t have everything in common though. She’s fluent in Spanish and I can say the standard 3 phrases that we learned in Spanish 1 in high school. My new daughter-in-law gives girl gifts and likes to talk about girl stuff.

Having a daughter- in-law means that you get asked questions you never thought you’d hear, like,

            “What do you usually like to do for Mother’s Day?” and “We’d love to come over for dinner. What can we bring?”

I also got a bonus when she signed on as a Hovie. Her sister and husband were good friends with Robby when he and Melody met, so we’ve sort of adopted them as surrogate family. So our family just got a lot bigger and more fun, to say the least. I feel like I just really lucked out in the daughter-in-law department and have been working on how to share it. But the best part is that she loves Robby as much as we do, which is just the icing on the cake for this Best. Year. Ever. Welcome to the family, Melody.