Grand-mama visits

David's mother visited yesterday. She's been in town for about 10 days, staying with David's sister Hannatu, and we'd gone to see her there the evening she arrived. But this was the first time she'd ever come to our house, and only the second time she'd seen Timothy (10 days ago being the first).

I'd been dreading it for over a month. I have nothing against David's mom--don't get me wrong. She seems like a really nice lady. But we don't have anything in common. She's a farmer, a villager who has had no formal education (not even primary school), and a widow. And the most notable thing we do not share is a common language. She speaks Tiv and a little bit of Hausa, and I speak English and a little bit of Hausa.

...Which wouldn't have been too bad if she'd come with Hannatu, or if David had been around the whole time. But he was on call yesterday, so he was at the hospital for at least half of the over four hours she was here. Oh my gosh. It was awful.

Okay, so it wasn't that bad when Timothy was awake and cheerful. He's really the main reason she came to visit us anyway. And with babies, you don't need to share a language. You can just play. So that was fine. Awkward, sure, but we survived.

David came home, and we had peanut-butter sandwiches for lunch. I'd thought of making something nicer, even rice, but David insisted that his mother needed to have peanut-butter and bread. I think he was trying to make me feel like I didn't need to go out of my way to impress her, but it only made me more uncomfortable, knowing I wasn't working hard to give her something special, or even something with which she was familiar.

After lunch, Timothy went down for his afternoon nap, and David was called back to the hospital. Great. So there I was, alone in the living room with David's mom. I had no idea what to do. (When I'd asked David as he was leaving what I was going to do, he'd said, "Nothing." Really helpful.) So what did I do? Played Spider Solitaire for 45 minutes until Timothy woke up.

I'm telling you: it was one of the worst afternoons of my life. And then in the evening, after she'd gone back to Hannatu's house, I got berated for not trying harder to get to know her. How am I supposed to get to know her? Sign language? Even sign language isn't universal!!

So the next time my mother-in-law comes to visit, and David finds out he's on call, I'm just not going to be home. Leave me out of it!!