Wait… I Thought This Was MY House!
Aditya and I have both been pulling long hours at work during the past couple of weeks. Frankly, it’s rare that we both get home before the night sets in. While we both have careers that have require long hours (my company’s motto: “the hours here are flexible; you can come in as early as you want, and leave as late as you want”), recent project disasters have stretched our workdays beyond our version of normal. This is particularly unfortunate as Aditya’s parents, Maa & Baba, are currently visiting us from India.
Of course, they are here for two months, so it’s not as if we won’t end up having plenty of family time together - but I do wish they didn’t have to spend so much time at our house by themselves. I worry about them getting bored; even Kajol, the energizer puppy, can only go for so many walks. I fret about all the interesting monuments and historic sites we aren’t seeing in the evenings for lack of energy and sunlight. And I’m genuinely distraught that, at some point, they might break The System while we’re away at the office.
The System, you see, is the underlying, um, order that controls the chaos of our lives. It’s the three piles of letters and bills ,discordantly stacked on the counter top, which cannot be mixed. It’s the pile of clothes on the closet floor that magically rotates, allowing for the least wrinkled and least pungent item to float to the top when needed. It’s the random junk strewn all over the living room by my inner Feng Shui master that lets me find the scissors, postage stamps, or a hair band right when I need it. Move one thing, and it’s quite possible that my entire life will be ruined. Or I won’t be able to find my favorite lip balm. Basically the same thing.
Aditya and I have developed The System through many years of practice, and Maa and Baba just can’t hope to learn the dance in only a couple of months. The System is breaking under the weight of four adults in the same space doing their own thing.
First, there were all the delicious Indian leftovers in the fridge - where did my aging vegetables go? Where’s the moldy cheese? Who hid the frozen meals behind all these rotis?
Then there were the piles of clean clothes appearing in our bedroom - I can’t find my sweater; it’s not on the floor or the ironing board, or draped over a chair, or wedged under a couch cushion… oh, the dresser!
Finally, we hit rock bottom when I walked in the door after work one day, and found the Kajol fur dust balls had disappeared, and the wood floors seemed distinctly… shiny.
I enquired about the radically changed appearance of my home, and Baba told me he had cleaned it. Having been raised to be polite, I thanked him profusely, and told him that there was no need to do so much housework during the day. Frankly, I was a little embarrassed at the state that Aditya and I had allowed the house to descend to - especially with guests visiting. Baba replied, saying, in effect, that “No, no, you should not thank me. I consider this my house too, and I have a responsibility to keep it clean.”
I’ll admit that this statement… pricked me a bit. “No,” I thought, “this is my house, and I’ll decide however clean it ought to be. And I can darn well thank you if I want to.” There may have even been a mental image of a tongue sticking out somewhere along the line. Before I could voice these fleeting thoughts, however, the slightly more rational and mature part of my brain asserted itself.
“Wait a second, Gori. You get home tired from work, walk in the door, and are upset that someone cleaned up the house for you? And, hey, did you notice that delicious smelling curry on the stove? You know, an Indian curry, cooked by someone from India, where the whole extended family home is a common thing? And where duties - particularly familial duties - are considered things you just do, not things you’re thanked for? Remember how you and Aditya always use to have arguments over his lack of please & thank you? Yeah… let’s connect those dots now.”
So, yes, some papers were moved out of their traditional place. And it took me two days to hunt down my favorite blue scissors, which Maa absconded with to use while knitting an all green outfit for a grandson on the way (no, not mine, and yes, I suspect he’ll look like a little, but awesome leprechaun). The System is shot, and that can be a little frustrating, even if there are new benefits to this short-term extended family lifestyle that I signed myself up for. But there are benefits - awesome ones in terms of household chores, and even better ones in terms of family time: mornings and nights spent playing cards, watching movies, and discussing Indian and American culture and news.
Could I handle this extend family thing in the long-term? I don’t know. I can be prickly when things don’t meet my expectations, especially at home. I need my alone time, with the door closed, as much as I need air - like any other true introvert. I miss knowing exactly what the statuses of the fridge and pantry are, day and night. Right now it’s working, though, and that’s all that really matters.
I ended up thanking Baba again for cleaning up the house, and told him how much I appreciated his efforts. I do the same thing with Maa when she cooks a lovely dinner for us, or gives me a hand with clearing the table, or even passes me something out of my reach. Growing up, I was taught to thank family members for efforts made, large or small, and to always make requests with a “please”. Maa and Baba are accepting of this strange American quirk of mine.
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What a GREAT post!!!! This cracked me up, I’d probably be the same way:
I’ll admit that this statement… pricked me a bit. “No,” I thought, “this is my house, and I’ll decide however clean it ought to be. And I can darn well thank you if I want to.” There may have even been a mental image of a tongue sticking out somewhere along the line.
What I really love about this post is that you truly highlighted a cultural difference…and the nice aspects of it for you! Besides that, you were able to have an awareness of YOUR Americanness. For example, you described how Americans perpetually thank people for things that maybe, just maybe, should really just be part of a natural duty we have for one another (or at least in the Indian sense of things…)??? I love how you explored the aspect of his parents staying with you for so long with an open mind…that’s not easy to do for a westerner accustomed to space and privacy.
I’ve already set a boundary that I’m not commiting to month long plus stay with R’s parents…but this gives me a tiny bit of hope that maybe it won’t be so bad…and maybe it will be kind of cool (R if you are reading this don’t get too excited…it’s just something I may, MAY be open to some day..hehe).
I’m so glad it’s going well for you!!!!!!
Hi Gori,
My Indian in-laws just left Tuesday after spending 6 weeks with us in our studio apartment. It was an adventure and took some flexibility on all of our parts, but I was amazed at how well it went. I actually enjoyed feeling part of a family again. I did have to adjust to my mother in law cooking (she even packed lunches for me and Satya), and to the bathroom “magically” being cleaned, but that wasn’t hard : )
Like you, Satya and I were incredibly busy and stressed out and so didn’t have much time to go sightseeing. Fortunately, we live near downtown so Satya’s parents were able to walk around and do some exploring on their own. We found them travel guides to our city and made sure they had passes for public transportation. I think their favorite thing though was the farmer’s market!
We bonded over looking at photos, his mother dressing me in sarees, and his parents trying to teach me some words of their language.
My advice is to relax, enjoy, try to snatch some moments of privacy, and focus on all the small moments of being a family.
Enjoy!
GG,
this is the first i’ve been on your blog, and it’s awesome that you have such a strong following! i mean, i totally see why — your posts are so thoughtful! will def be talking to you before i meet KB’s mom in a few months 
hope to see you guys soon.
~ L
How funny! I am also a fan of what I call “organized mess.” I even have a sign hanging above my desk at home that says “Please don’t clean up the mess. You’ll confuse me and screw up my world.” My mom saw it at a craft fair and decided she had to get it for me.
I hope you guys are able to get away for a little bit of sightseeing! Although, just hanging out getting to know each other better will be fun, too.
Really interesting post, Gori! Glad to see you back!
I might (but correct me if I’m wrong!) be the only regular commenter on this blog who actually lives full-time with her Indian in-laws. Ricky’s the only boy in his family, so his parents are living with us permanently. There are so many wonderful things about having his parents with us - we’re really building a great family unit and it’s so lovely to have other people around who love you and care for you (not to mention that his mom’s an amazing cook!). However, that’s not to say that there haven’t been some challenges.
Initially, I was worried about how I would ever feel at home coming into this household that was already established. I was concerned that the house (or condo, actually) wouldn’t feel like mine. Ricky’s mom sweetly kept insisting that it was my house now, my kitchen, etc., but I still wondered. One of the ways that we’ve dealt with this is to give the house a complete and utter overhaul. The process of clearing out all the useless junk that his parents had been saving and storing for in some cases over 20 years began back in January, and we’re just now finishing it up (which may give you some idea of how monumental a task this was!). We’ve reorganized every room in the house, making things work better, more efficiently. Ricky’s parents have been 100% on board with all the changes, and they’re so happy with the results. Now, the house really is beginning to feel like mine, although I don’t think it’ll fully feel like my house until we actually move into a house of our own (probably a year or two down the line).
The whole issue of household chores has been something of an adjustment as well, for both sides. It was so interesting to read the part in Gori’s post about familial duties in Indian culture being something you just do, not something you need to be thanked for, and relate that to my own experiences. I’d add that although there isn’t necessarily an expectation of thanks for doing household chores, there is the expectation that everyone will at least attempt to pitch in and help out. In our little hybrid household, if you’re working, everyone else is constantly asking whether you need any help. It can become a bit overdone sometimes, but on the whole, I think it’s a really lovely way to live. Slowly, Ricky’s mom is coming around to the idea that I actually like cooking and cleaning, and that she doesn’t need to feel bad if I’m working - and I’m getting much better about always offering to help if I see someone else working.
One of the other challenges has mainly come from my end - I’m finding it somewhat of an adjustment to actually be living as part of a family again, after so long on my own. I had roommates for part of that time, of course - but living with a roommate is very different than living as part of a family, at least in my experience. With a roommate, you don’t have that obligation to always interact with them - you do your thing, and they do theirs, and while sometimes you do things together, it’s not necessary to always be engaging each other in conversation. Living with people who are part of your family is very different - you can’t just be always doing your own thing. It’s still something I’m getting used to, but I think I’m doing a pretty good job so far.
All in all, I’m really enjoying living with Ricky’s parents, and I’m very thankful we have such a good relationship with them. They’re wonderful people, and they enrich our lives so much. I think it’ll only get better once we have children and we add on to our little extended family - plus, we’ve got ready-made baby-sitters!
MinnesotaMeetsKarnataka—you are my official hero!!! A studio with in-laws for 6 weeks?! What a trooper.
And I’m so glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, hope!
@ sf - I think parents staying post-baby (are there general plans in that direction, or do you have news to annouce?) is a very good idea. Newborns are SO MUCH time, as are toddlers. I do think the extended family/village mentality of raising a child can often help everyone stay sane - and needed.
@ Minnesotameetskarnataka - welcome to the blog! I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before. And I like your blog a lot, too - expect some commments from me in a little while. I don’t think I could handle studio living with the inlaws, unless I had a cafe or library nearby to escape to sometimes when I just didn’t want to talk with anyone. What “downtown” do you live near, if you don’t mind me asking? (If you live in/near DC, I’d love to hear what places your inlaws particularly enjoyed visiting.)
@ L - glad you found the blog. Are you going to watch the boys (Aditya and KB, for the rest of you) play cricket this weekend? Also: BBQing! We’ll get some corn on the cob & limes too!
@ D - organized mess is exactly the right phrase for it. Although I do have a filing system to keep things from getting out of control.
@ mocroidh - thanks for sharing your unique (to us) viewpoint! Some of the issues you mention are definently going to be ones I’ll be discussing in later posts; I certainly like to do my own thing sometimes. I imagine it was difficult to move into their house too - not sure I could do that unless there was an immediate revamping of the house to make it all of ours.
Lovely post. I have to say, I feel the same way every time my mother comes to stay. I’m grateful for the help and all but I can’t wait to get that ordered chaos back when she leaves.
I just moved in with my Indian-American partner and I keep finding the signs of his mother in the house. Her toothbrush in the upstairs bath, foods he’ll never use that she bought on her last visit, random this’s and that’s that he says are “my mom’s” when I ask. He says she always rearranges the kitchen when she comes to visit. Though I can see why (he’s not really a cook, so it’s not arranged for easy cooking), I worry about her moving things once I get them settled ‘my way.’
Your post was entertaining and insightful and like many others who commented, it gives me hope that I can adapt and learn another way.
@mocroidh: Wow! I’ve thought and thought about what it would be like to live on an ongoing basis with either my parents or my in-laws - but honestly, I’ve never talked with anyone my own age who’s done it (at least, not while married as a permanent, intentional arrangement), much less with Indian in-laws. It’s fantastic to hear about an example that’s really working. Thanks for sharing - I’d love to hear more, too!
@”are there general plans in that direction, or do you have news to announce?”: well… since we’re now post-ultrasound and know there’s an actual heartbeat in there, yes! 9 weeks + 3 days down, 30 weeks + 4 days-ish to go…!
@ GG - Yay great post… glad you posted after so long! Hope you had an amazing summer!
@SF - Congrats! How exciting!
@everyone Hello
[...] blog post is in response to GoriGirl’s post about hosting her inlaws. At the end of May, Satya’s parents came to the U.S. from India to [...]
Awesome post, GG.
Sometime back, this sort of topic (without the multicultural aspect of it) was covered in Slate.
Re my family - my mom feels guilty about “burdening” herself on her two sons and therefore, tries to make herself “useful” by doing chores. Clearly, there are pros and cons of this approach.
Big congrats, sf! I wish you all the best - an easy, healthy pregnancy, and a husband willing to make late night grocery runs.
Just to clarify, guys, I did know that the in-laws would be doing household chores, and they did ask first. It’s still just a little unsettling to come home to a changed house.
Sometimes, it sucks when you have your heap of paper moved. I guess you are still in college mode. Most Indians don’t usually thank you for what they consider polite nothings, in sharp contrasts to people thanking you here for holding a door open for them. Unless they happen to be from Lucknow, then they thank you for every little moment you make, hehe.
You’ve always seemed a gori desi ;). I wonder how different you were, before you met Aditya.
GG, I know how you feel about the changed house thing. At least your in-laws asked first. My grandmother is notorious for cleaning the house everytime she visits. This has been the cause of numerous arguements between her and my mom because she tends to do things like rearrange the kitchen cabinets and then my mom has to put things back where they were. When I was younger, I would put a sign on my door telling her not to clean my room while I was at school. Thankfully, when she visits me now, she doesn’t usually try to clean my place.
Oh man, that brought me to tears! I relate to this so much. I’ll never forget how my soon to be Mother-in-law would just shake her head at every time I’d say Thank You (I think I said it to her about 100 times a day) and say “No,no,no. No thanks needed.” While smiling & giggling at me like she thought I was as strange as a Gorilla in a party dress!
Luck you is all I can say, my Indian in-laws stayed for 4 months! I guess them being accustomed to their servants and the mentality that the Daughter in law is also meant for that capacity, they did not expect to lift a finger (although they also said the same thing, that it is their house). Instead they expected me to touch their feet whenever I see them at the dawn of a new day.
As a PhD student I didn’t have an actual job in their eyes so instead I was to host all their guests and serve them as royalty. I fell far behind in my readings and papers since they would never give me an hour of peace in the house without yelling for me to come get them water or ice cream while they sat there watching Bollywood.
They commanded me to do housework in my own house! I gave up my bedroom to sleep on a twin mattress (with my husband) the entire 4 months, okay no big deal, but the fact that his mother stole all my perfumes (CD, D&B, Burberry to name a few) and about 5 shirts in the meantime did not make me much more fond of her…I offered my bed, not the contents of the room. Of course after realizing she had taken all of my things I told my husband who only said, oh she said you gave it to her as a gift, I’m sure it’s all a cultural misunderstanding.
Indian men have some sort of Oedipus obsession with their mother’s and usually they will choose their parent’s happiness before yours. I love my husband, but between my visit to India for the wedding where I was forced to submit to everything they said without exception, religious ceremonies (after I had went out of the way to have a secular wedding in the US at the request of them) and the total crap I went through during the 4 months they were here, it was enough to make me want to leave. I have a personality that absolutely seeks to avoid conflict so it was difficult to be mean to them, I just started giving the cold shoulder and shutting myself away from them completely in order to not have a breakdown.
I’m glad the Atlantic & Pacific Oceans separates us, I dread the phone calls when I MUST talk to them or face making my husband the ridicule of the family. If I had to live with them, or if they visit again (for months as Indians do) I would move out for that time period.
Oh! Andrea, what a horror story! I’m so sorry!
Makes me appreciate my own inlaws just all that much more.
I worry about what it will be like if they’re able to come for 4 months when our baby is born - but only because of standard things like lack of personal space in a small apartment, and semi-cultural things like the fact they won’t know anyone else and my MIL is not very comfortable speaking in English, and I worry about them being isolated. There’s no question in my mind that having them here during the difficult new-baby-but-already-back-to-work time would net make it easier rather than harder.
I know I lucked out in the in-laws department, but I think perhaps I should email them right now and remind them just how much I appreciate them!
That does sound terrible, Andrea - I can’t imagine how you must have got through it. Were you at least able to vent to your husband? From your post it sounds like you had to kind of keep it all internal, which must have just made it that much more frustrating. I hope my impression was wrong and that you were able to talk with him and express your concerns, and that he was at least a bit more supportive than it seemed from your post!
Like sf, hearing stories like yours makes me very appreciative of my own inlaws - and of my husband as well! He’s made it explicitly clear to me that I come first, then his parents. I’m not sure if this is a result of his growing up here mostly in the U.S., or because his parents are just super-easy-going, or what…but I’m thankful nonetheless.
Mocroidh, that’s a good point - I forgot to write it, but I also had a lot of sense of “thank goodness for my husband’s explicit and lived-by priorities”, as well. And I don’t think it’s a function of culture, necessarily - my husband didn’t come to the US until graduate school. He is pretty laid back, though. Not in a passive way - just, he doesn’t get worked up about things, just does what needs doing and moves along.
I also agree that not getting to vent would make it much harder. I hope the e-sympathy is helping at least a little??
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1) WELCOME BACK! Thrilled to have the update =)
2) This is a great post to read. As the possibility of the in-laws coming for a perhaps quite extended post-baby stay becomes gradually increasingly real, I’m trying to really ask myself how long and how well I truly think I’ll be able to handle such a situation well. I hope can count on myself to do as well as you do in the fine moments described here =)