My Korean Mother-In-Law’s First Visit

On my way home from work this afternoon, my husband called and told me his father would be coming to the city to go to a tax office and may possibly be staying the night at our house. Our house? Possibly? Of course, my husband is currently in a van on his way out of the city for a concert, so just me and his dad. This scenario reminded me of the one and only time his mother visited us just before we got married.

There are a lot of stories about mother-in-law’s and when it comes to Korean mother-in-law’s, well, the stories aren’t usually that good. To be honest, there are a lot of great things about Korean mother-in-laws in my opinion, but I do remember that first visit and the stress associated.

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We’d already been living together for a couple of years and his mother called up one day rather abruptly and said she’d be up on Saturday and she’d stay the night and leave Sunday. I wondered why she suddenly felt the urge to come and visit.

Of course, my husband tells me this and then nonchalantly mentions that he has a concert and will be gone most of the Saturday afternoon and evening for the show. Just me and his mother, I mulled over the idea for awhile. It’s not that I don’t like his mother. I like her a lot in fact. But we can’t really sit around for hours and gab, so I wondered what we could possibly do for so much time alone.

The day came and I had cleaned and gone shopping for food and prepared the blankets for her to sleep on. My husband and I went to the station and retrieved her and then he left and we both stared at each other.

She asked me a few questions about life and our house and what I thought we needed. This is a recurring situation with us. His mother often asks me if I want this or that, or tries to buy me things and as thankful as I am, I just never want to take too much or seem like I want too much. It’s a balancing act of sorts, between taking enough so that she feels like she’s doing something for her daughter-in-law and not taking too much that she feels burdened.

To be honest, I’d just prefer to buy things myself and not have to think so much about it all.

Here we were at Homeplus standing in the home section and my mother-in-law wants to know what I want for our house. I stood there silently while she went through a list of things asking if we had this or that. I finally told her we could use a mixing bowl. We picked one out and I could tell she didn’t think that was enough, so I told her maybe some drinking glasses would be good.

She was still not satisfied and it was clearly getting awkward. It may have been more helpful in retrospect, if she just told me how much she wanted to spend and I could have figured it out. I said maybe we could come back when the husband returned in the evening and she felt fine with that and we went to the food section. I wasn’t quite sure why we were buying food, since I had that covered, but I let her do her thing.

Back at the house, we unpacked everything and she went straight to the kitchen and began cooking dinner. I went to her side and wondered what I should be doing and more importantly I wondered what she was doing. Was it normal for a mother-in-law to visit and then cook the meals? Was this a Korean thing?

To me, she was a guest and so she should sit while I cooked, cleaned, and moved around. She should rest, shouldn’t she? My mother-in-law told me to sit down and watch TV and not wanting to make the situation more awkward by saying I would cook, I did as I was told and eventually the husband returned home and we ate the delicious dinner she’d prepared together.

The next morning, I woke up to find her standing on a chair, as she is quite short, with all of my cupboard doors open peering inside. This was actually reminiscent of a nightmare I’d had a few nights earlier and I almost ran back into my room upon seeing her.

My husband is the only son and he is the oldest in his family. If we were to follow Korean traditional customs, his parents should really be living with us. I like his parents, but I wouldn’t really want to live with any parents: his, mine, or otherwise. If we lived with them, I think I’d be on the edge of my seat constantly thinking about what is proper or not, I’d never be able to eat pasta again, and I’d never be able to wear a tank top in the summer when it’s burning up because I’m sure that’d be improper.

The first idea that raced through my mind upon seeing her precariously standing there was that she really was moving in and taking over and rearranging my kitchen. I think every girl has her own way of arranging her kitchen or doing tasks in the kitchen, most likely taking after her own mother. I’ve noticed my husband’s sister washes her dishes the exact same way as her mother and I arrange my kitchen like my mother does.

It was sort of a shock to the system to see my mother-in-law up there and this wave of ownership swept over me. What was this other woman doing in my kitchen? After I took a deep breath, I realized she was cleaning and in fact had already cleaned out the refrigerator and the bathroom and swept the floor. I told my husband to tell her to stop and she said she’d be done soon and would make breakfast.

How long had she even been awake? Was this her passive aggressive way of telling me my house was dirty?

It was almost too much for me to take and I took my husband aside and asked him if he thought our house was a mess. He said no and asked why. I explained that if she cleaned, after I’d diligently done so mind you, it was telling me she didn’t think our house was clean enough. And the fact that she kept cooking, was telling me she didn’t think I could cook.

I hadn’t cooked a meal and my house had been cleaned after I cleaned it. My husband explained that it was a Korean mother thing to do and shouldn’t be taken offensively. Of course my brain knew she wasn’t trying to tell me I couldn’t cook, which I know she thinks regarding Korean food, or that my house was dirty, but it still felt that way.

It was interesting that my husband hadn’t even considered that his mother doing this would be strange or unpleasant to me. He took this to be a common occurrence. We ate breakfast together and took her to the station to return home, a part of me thankful to have my kitchen back and a part of me still seeking the approval from his mother that I didn’t get.

Since then, I’ve talked to other Korean women about this and they all say their mothers and mother-in-laws do this when they visit. When I ask them how they feel about it, overwhelmingly the answer is that they know they should be thankful because their mothers are trying to show that they care and this is how they do it.

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They know they should be thankful, but are they really thankful? I’ve started trying to cook more Korean dishes, mostly side dishes right now, but I hope that the next time his mother visits at least one dish that I made can be on the table. If she takes more than two bites, I’ll know I’ve done well.

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