In-laws to the rescue: Family support in times of need - comment

In-laws who deliver

Some people just fall into the right families.

Take my daughter, The Lass, for instance.

Three weeks ago, The Lass, her husband, and their two daughters were supposed to move apartments – a notoriously tense experience.

Three days beforehand, my son-in-law Sonny, who had already served two long reserve stints since October 7 – including the dreaded month of August, when there are no formal frameworks for the kids – got yet another call-up notice for duty that was to start immediately. In other words, he would not be around for the move.

Sonny had the good sense to immediately call his father, a take-charge kind of guy, who said he would handle it. On the day of the move, Sonny’s dad arrived with his wife and two of their kids to oversee the operation.

“It’s a good thing Sonny called his father instead of you,” The Lass told me afterward, perhaps not as sensitive to my feelings as she might have been.

“Here’s the difference between you and my father-in-law,” she explained, almost apologetic. “He took control and told the movers what to do. Had you come, the movers would have told you what to do.”

From time to time, The Lass exhibits a trait seen often in children of all ages: a penchant for forgetting that their parents have feelings, too.

Like when I mentioned to her recently that The Wife and I had been invited to a Shabbat meal at someone’s house – someone out of our usual rotation.

“Do you think they invited you because they hoped you’d say no?” she asked, completely serious and astounded that this particular invitation was extended.

This is the same daughter who was dumbfounded years ago when I told her I was going abroad to speak. “People pay to hear you talk?” she asked, genuinely flummoxed.

So when she declared her preference for her father-in-law on moving day, I took it in stride.

And, to be fair, she wasn’t wrong. Her Israeli-born father-in-law was the right man for the job. He knows the ropes, how things work, how to talk to movers, and can be chummy and assertive with their boss at the same time.

Being an Oleh 

As an immigrant, albeit a very veteran one, I would have been intimidated by the whole scene, out of my league – fretting the entire time that I would get ripped off and end up getting my daughter ripped off as well.

Sure, I’d try the chummy-but-aggressive shtick, but it would come across as fake. I don’t have the slang, the accent, or the attitude. Sonny definitely made the right choice, calling his father on this one. Me? He should call me to fill out an English form online.

THE SAME goes for Skippy, son No. 2. He, too, married well.

When he went into the reserves last month for his third stint – after also spending August in the army – his in-laws stepped in. 

With a sprawling house with a lawn, patio, and several guest rooms, they hosted his wife and boys for days at a time.

When the boys got noisy and rambunctious – something that happens from time to time – they could send them upstairs or outside and not hear a peep. Their house is that big.

Not my house. I live in a 4½-room apartment with a tiny balcony. When the Skippies come for an overnight stay, it’s obviously wonderful but a bit of a zoo. When the boys get noisy and rambunctious, there’s nowhere to send them out of earshot.

So when the rockets fell near Skippy’s home while he was in the reserves, and school was canceled in their community, my daughter-in-law took refuge in her parents’ home. 

Here’s the rule: For Shabbat, they come to us; for a stay of three nights or more, they head to her parents’ home.

Am I jealous? Maybe a little. All this lifts up Saba Benny in the eyes of my grandsons at my expense. 

Saba Benny is the cool grandpa with the deck and the big house. Saba Herb? I’m the less cool grandpa with the unpronounceable name (“Hairb”) and no lawn.

EVEN MY youngest son has in-laws who provide more practical support than I ever could. His wife’s father owns a moving company.

While this connection didn’t help The Lass when she moved – different family, different region of the country – marrying into a family of movers has proven a veritable bonanza for The Youngest.

Like his sister, The Youngest also moved a few weeks back. This was his fourth major move in six years of marriage; I’ve moved four times in 38 years of marriage. How can he move so often? Because it doesn’t cost him a shekel.

All of this got me thinking: Each of my married kids has in-laws who are competent and resourceful and know how to get things done in this land. My kids got lucky with such in-laws. But what do The Wife and I have to offer our kids’ spouses?

So, one day, over coffee, we sat down to figure it all out and analyze what added value we provided our son- and daughters-in-law. What did they gain by marrying into our family?

With The Wife, a psychotherapist, they gained a listening ear, which is not a bad acquisition. But what about me? Anything they initially got from me – English grammar help, a Hebrew to English translation service – they can now get from ChatGPT.

“This is kind of depressing,” I told The Wife, realizing that AI was taking away much of what I had to offer my kids’ spouses.

But then The Lass sent me a video of her two-year-old daughter singing that 1970s KC and the Sunshine Band dance floor hit “Shake Your Booty” in her infectious little Israeli accent. It’s a song I always play when they come over and we make fruit shakes.

“Shake, shake, shake,” she belted out. “Shake, shake shake – shake your booty, shake your booty.”

I kvelled. And at that moment it dawned on me what I bring to the table: a knowledge of the top Billboard hits of the 1970s. Because, as I said, some people just fall into the right families.