63

Natalie Angier presents a math problem for us to reckon with: “A son, in fact, may rightfully be thought of as a mama’s boy; he has her x chromosomes alive in every cell of his body….Thus he has more of his mother’s genes operating in his body than he does of his father’s, thousands more.…If you do the calculations, your brother works out to be about 6 percent more related to your mother than to your father, and he is 3 percent more related to your mother than you are….”Woman: An Intimate Geography (1999)

No one spins out hypothetical implications better than Natalie Angier, but I am inspired to ponder some of my own. Is that why mothers are more comfortable with their sons and fathers with their daughters? Does this explain why daughters look like their fathers and sons look like their mothers? When I realized that my husband was more in character like his mother than his father, I was brought to tears. Why tears? Well, my mother-in-law was the classic Mother-in-Law-in-Tooth-and-Claw, the creature vilified everywhere from fairy tales to stand-up routines. She is now resting in peace, and so am I. But when I tried to understand why my husband was the way he was, it occurred to me that he was more like his mother than his father, and that just didn’t seem possible. And yet Natalie says it is so.

So I have to rewrite history (I do periodically) and recognize that my husband got from her his compassion, his creativity, and his willingness to help others, in short, everything that I really love about him.

This is the woman who, shortly after our marriage, sweetly offered to buy me an iron if I would use it. The woman who offered a cash reward to the daughter-in-law who could make more money than the other two daughters-in-law. The woman who thought her friend supplied all our kids’ Christmas presents, not me.

And then I remember that this same woman paid for her cleaning lady’s teeth to be fixed. She took care of me for a week after each birth. She came and painted our walls so that we could move into the new house. I have to thank that “impoverished Y chromosome” – as Natalie calls it – for the attributes that my mother-in-law gave my husband.

Now I’m a mother-in-law. I think I’m the world’s least obnoxious, underbearing, tactful mother-in-law in the world, so blameless that I actually don’t interact much at all. I am intimidated by the stereotypical mother-in-law to the point that I’m frozen. So I have to think about my son, who is more me than the other two children. I think about his caring, his concern, his nurturing loving self, and I can only hope my daughter-in-law thinks he got most of it from me.