Mother-in-law picks up a wooden spoon

I’ve been home alone all week, and although this has been good for my writing, I’ve found myself pretty bored on occasion. To the point where I caught myself cleaning the house, which is not something I usually do with great enthusiasm.

At one point I was so engrossed at scrubbing the oven that I transported myself into the body of a housewife from the 1950s. The in-laws are coming to dinner, I fantasised, and I must impress the Monster-in-Law with the sparkliness of my kitchen.

The fantasy became quite edgy as it developed. When the evening came, and my young husband and his father were enjoying madeira in the living room, my mother-in-law came into the kitchen – ostensibly, to keep me company, but actually to boss me around. I was about to take the lamb joint out of the oven to stand, when she noted how well I was doing to cook any food at all in a kitchen that’s this badly organised.

Although I happened to be quite proud of my kitchen, I humbly asked her for some suggestions to make it better. She huffily responded that I had a long way to go before I got halfway civilised, so perhaps it was a conversation for some other time, when food wasn’t in danger of burning.

I served lunch, and I felt it had gone pretty well, but to my dismay the mother-in-law insisted that she and I had to take care of the dishes at once, as soon as we were done with the food. The men took themselves back to the living-room to smoke and talk about men things, while in the meantime I bravely return to the kitchen with the stern matron.

There, it turned out that she lured me back there not to help me with the dishes, but to berate me for my roast – the meat had been too dry, the potatoes too burned, the greens too anaemic. No wonder, when my kitchen was in such disarray. She felt that I must be taught a strict lesson about keeping house for her precious son.

“But he’s happy,” I tentatively objected.

“He thinks he’s happy. But soon enough he will realise what he is missing. I’m attempting to spare you the discord.”

At this point she suggested that some mentoring was in order. Because my mother lived quite far away, she was ready to take me under her wing, and teach me to keep house the way she has taught her own daughters.

I didn’t see any way to escape, without causing a scandal. Therefore, I submitted to the first lesson. This involved my mother-in-law sitting on the kitchen chair, picking up one of my wooden spoons, and ordering me over her knee, with my flouncy floral dress flipped up to over my shoulders. I needed to learn, apparently, what happened when my housekeeping wasn’t up to the necessary standard.

She spanked me with the wooden spoon so hard that all my pride went out of the window, and I sobbed like a little girl. My bottom felt like it was engulfed in flames. The mother-in-law wasn’t satisfied until I most humbly begged forgiveness for my slovenliness, and then she finally allowed me to stand and adjust my dress.

“You will come to my house for housekeeping lessons,” she declared. “I will expect you every Tuesday at 2 o’clock sharp. Now go and wash your face, so that you can show yourself in polite company again, and then do something about these dishes.”

With this she regally departed from my kitchen, leaving me with the pile of the washing-up, and an extremely sore bottom that was throbbing in pain underneath my dress and pettycoat.