Happy Birthing Day...

So, here it is, the 18th birthday of my youngest son - the only one not yet married. Though of course this is his day, I do find it amusing that on the birthday of anyone, our mothers are set aside, though they were the ones who carried us for 9 months and labored us into the world.

That, I suppose, is what Mother's Day is supposed to make up for. Still, on any one of my own sons' birthdays, I find myself remembering little bits of the day of delivery -- I don't mention it to them, but their birthday is the one day that still connects me to them, at least in my mind.

I find my recent experience - the one wherein I came to realize, I'm a Mother-in-Law, (shudder) has made me somewhat wiser but cynical about being a mother, as well as a mother in law. As I watch my youngest become an adult, I start to think, "why bother?" and "what's the point?"

His girlfriend (also 18) and I are on fairly good terms. But now, with the vast smarts cast upon me by visiting countless MIL hater websites and reading posts by DIL's, reflecting on my own minor wounds and happenings with my own DIL's (not to mention the major blow up with DIL #1), I raise one eyebrow as I view my son's GF and think -- mmm hmmm... it's just a matter of time.

What kind of an attitude is that, I ask only half laughing at myself!

Oh, probably realistic.

This all seems to me somewhat unrelated to being a MIL and DIL -- it's just what happens when our children grow up, leave home and marry. Or marry, leave home and grow up. In whatever order they do it. The key words though, are not "marry" or "grow up". It's "leave home" -- read "leave us".

It's what they are supposed to do, but it is difficult to accept. And we really are now just backdrop in their lives. It could be far worse, if we were some other species. I'm too lazy to do the research, but I wonder what happens in the animal kingdom when offspring grow up and have their own families. Do apes and gorillas invite their parents over every week-end? Do chimpanzee MIL's and DIL's fight? Maybe so, or maybe we can still argue we're not apes, gorillas, chimpanzees.

Still -- I do not like this feeling, I will admit it, that I am no longer a part of my married sons' lives except as needed for money, childcare, or obligatory visits on holidays. But there isn't really much I can do about it. And right now, I am struggling not to take this sad awareness out on my youngest son and his girlfriend/future fiancee -- at the moment I feel prone to snarl and snap at whoever she may be, to turn into the MIL from hell proclaiming, "Don't think you're gonna get rid of me that easy, Missy."

So, maybe now I'm coming to realize from whence the stereotypical MIL is born.