My mother-in-law, Carolyn, is 5’11” and since I stand at a meager 5’4″ this made quite the impression on me when we first met. Carolyn is this beautiful combination of old-fashioned southern belle and 21st century bad-ass. She knows how to make biscuits and gravy from scratch and runs a large daycare center with over 200 children. But the thing I love most about Carolyn is that she almost always takes my side when David and I argue. A quality that is priceless in a mother-in-law.

Television is filled with a long litany of evil mother-in-laws from Endora on “Bewitched” to Marie on “Everybody Loves Raymond”. That is the order of nature. Mother loves son. Son loves other woman. Mother hates other woman. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. My relationship with Carolyn could not be farther from that image. Since I live so far from my own mother, Carolyn has become my “satellite Mom”. In many ways I feel as if my mother taught me all that she could and where she stopped Carolyn has picked up.

Carolyn has taught me about loving others even when you’d rather smack them. She has taught me so much about being a parent and most importantly has given me the confidence I needed to raise my own children. She held my hand (or leg as the case may be) through the birth of both of my children and encouraged me to embrace the beauty and wonder of pushing a small, wet, tiny, slimy, person out of my body. Much like my own mother she has seen me at my worst, knows the worst things about me and still loves me.

I love the fact that when I sit in her “chair” her side table is filled with magazines, newspaper clippings and interesting books. I adore that her closets are a magical source of childhood memories and a menagerie of new toys. But mostly I love her for not trying to change me, for loving me as I am, and allowing me to marry her son. And that is why I don’t call her Carolyn. I call her mom.