When my future MIL invited me over for tea, I thought she wanted to bond before the wedding. Instead, she handed me a list of 25 luxury gifts to buy for her; one for each year she “invested” in raising Jake. Now I’m questioning what kind of family I’m really marrying into… and how far she’ll go.
You know that feeling when someone’s being nice to you, but every instinct in your body is screaming “danger”? That’s exactly how I felt when Jake’s mom called me three weeks before our wedding. Jake and I had been together for almost three years and engaged for six months.
His family seemed normal and nice enough, even though his mom, Linda, still called him her baby boy and cut his steak for him at barbeques. I chalked it up to her being overprotective and just decided to do my best to get along with her. “Sweetheart,” Linda cooed into the phone, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness, “I was hoping we could have a little woman-to-woman chat before the big day.
Why don’t you come over for tea tomorrow afternoon?”
“Sure,” I replied. I had a bad feeling about it, but I pushed it aside. This could be the perfect opportunity for Linda and me to get to know each other better.
So, there I was the next day, standing on her pristine doorstep with a bottle of wine, trying to psych myself up for an afternoon of tea and small talk with my future MIL. Linda answered, wearing her perfectly pressed cardigan and that smile. You know the one.
The kind that looks warm from a distance but gets colder the closer you get. “Come in, dear,” she said, ushering me into her living room, where everything was beige and uncomfortable. “I’ve made chamomile.”
She poured the tea into delicate china cups that probably cost more than my car payment.
I waited for her to start talking about wedding plans or maybe share some embarrassing Jake stories. Instead, she reached into a drawer and slid a folded piece of paper toward me across the coffee table. “What’s this?” I asked, picking it up.
“Oh, just a little something I put together for you,” Linda said, settling back into her chair like she’d just handed me a family recipe. I unfolded the paper and nearly choked on my tea. The page Linda had given me contained a list.
Linda’s 25 “Must-Have” Gifts Before the Wedding:
Louis Vuitton Neverfull MM handbag. Cartier Love bracelet. Tiffany diamond pendant.
The list went on and on: Gucci silk scarf, Hermès perfume, spa weekends, trips to Napa Valley, Chanel No. 5, Apple Watch, custom cashmere, first-class tickets to Hawaii. Twenty-five items that probably cost more than Jake and I make in a year combined.
“Linda,” I said, letting out a little chuckle while my brain struggled to process what I was reading, “what exactly is this?”
She took a delicate sip of her tea and smiled that practiced smile again. “That’s your repayment list, sweetheart. One gift for every year I invested in raising Jake.”
I stared at her.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“You’re getting a finished product, thanks largely to the work I put in to raise Jake to become the man he is today,” she said. “You can’t put a price on motherhood,” she continued, as if she were explaining something obvious to a particularly slow child. “But in this case, I have, and I think you’ll find it’s quite reasonable.”
Reasonable?
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