Christmas Gift
"Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me."
Brianna always hated the story of Ruth and Naomi. Ruth, from the Old Testament, had so loved her mother-in-law that she left her own homeland and family out of devotion for that woman. Well what if the daughter-in-law had no choice in following the old woman? What if it was that or dying alone in the streets?
Labelle had lived alone far too long to ever need her daughter-in-law's help, and Brianna had never needed anyone in her life except her husband. The younger woman had sworn to never set foot back in her old neighborhood and look at her now, crawling back on hands and knees to grovel at the front door of her overbearing mother-in-law.
The new widow had even tried to sell all of her possessions to keep the last representation of freedom she and Robert had. Their beautiful, quaint house in a nice area was the embodiment of everything the old neighborhood was not. She had thought it was safe, but Robert's death proved anyone could be killed unexpectedly no matter what neighborhood you lived in.
Then she found out she was pregnant.
The morning sickness, the pain and swelling, to Brianna's surprise, Labelle knew of all the remedies to relieve her symptoms. When her son was born, the atmosphere in the house was strained. Her mother-in-law criticized everything she did, from the way she changed his diaper to his nightly schedule, even to the way she held him. Labelle never did make any mistakes raising Robert, and that was why he turned out to be the perfect son.
"He isn't Robert, Labelle! He should be his own man!" Brianna had finally shouted at her.
The older woman shrank back a little at the truth. She had been projecting memories of her son onto the new infant, and that was unfair to everyone in the house.
A deep breath.
He is your grandson, not your son. Let the mother learn.
Labelle looked on proudly one night when the child would not stop wailing, Brianna easily calmed him with a loving touch. Sometimes a child needed a mother. The two women found a right balance between them. While the grandmother took care of the baby, Brianna managed to obtain a full time job guaranteeing her baby's financial needs without dipping into Labelle's monthly stipends.
The two knew that everything was going to be ok when one Christmas, five years later, the young boy picked up his father's trumpet and blew a semi passable note. Both mother and grandmother gave each other a fond look.
Because Naomi is a wily, manipulative woman in the bible, and mothers and mother-in-laws can be smothering.