Process...messy but very necessary

We just returned from a 2 week trip to San Francisco and New York....well, New Jersey. I was not looking forward to seeing the in laws since our last visit in December. My MIL and I had what you'd call a falling out to which I responded with a letter to her in my December entry. I was contemplating showing it to her during our visit but decided to wait and see what would transpire from this one.

Well, she did it again. While H&T were horsing around taking turns dog piling on each other, she kept blaming T for being too aggressive on H. Then there was this incident after the playground where MIL helped H clean the bottoms of her feet in the car and sat back down. T then said, "Gamma, my feet too." To which she responded in Korean, "Did you hear that? Your son is asking me to clean his already clean feet too. What a strange child."
I was fuming. I retorted with, "It's totally normal that he wants equal treatment from his grandmother. I think it's cute. If you put a negative spin on it, anything can be interpreted as strange. Please try to normalize his behavior instead of pathologizing it. It doesn't help that you single him out this way each time he's asking for equal attention."

She then approached me at the end of the day and proclaimed that I am way too sensitive about her comments. To which I said, if I don't practice protecting him now, I'll nurture a habit of standing idly by each time his integrity has been violated. She openly admitted that often times, she finds herself reflecting on her own behaviors and thoughts and feels sad for herself. To her, T will always be seen in a different light than H and she surprises even her own self when she cannot come to terms with the conditional love she has for him. I appreciated her candor. She was willing to admit her faults.

In the end, she requested this of me. She asked to look upon her trespasses against T as a work in progress. That she did not instantly fall in love with him as she had with biologically born H. That it seems to be taking a lot longer for her to fully accept his idiosyncracies and character flaws. Bravo. Houston, we have reached a stepping stone.