When we were on our way to meet my wife’s parents for the first time, she told me how the last time she’d seen them, her father had come after her car with a sledge hammer, and her Mom had thrown all her clothes out on the front yard and threw her out of the house, because she had had the audacity to get a job, when they needed her not to have an income, so they could continue to collect the maximum amount of social security for her father’s health condition. So they threw her out, so she wouldn’t count against their social security. Nice people.

She said, “That’s why we’re meeting them in a public place (a restaurant)— they won’t act like that in public”. I will admit to having second thoughts about this whole thing as I prepared myself for the worst. Instead, I found them to be delightful, and began to wonder about her! However, time did prove to bear out her stories, but I went in forewarned, with open eyes.

I was actually able to forge meaningful relationships with both of them. I had to literally read her Mom the riot act once, in a letter that forever after became known in the family lore as “The Letter” — but, it resulted in her respecting me more than ever (and she was a little afraid of me), and never treated her daughter, my wife, disrespectfully again.