My daughter commented this week that I was beginning to sound just like Baba (my mother-in-law) as I waxed poetic over the blooming iris and informed her that the mockingbirds were very busy. It made me smile. Not that Baba and I were kindred spirits because we weren’t. Her son (my husband) was born after she turned 40 so she was closer in age to my grandparents than my parents. This age difference widened the natural gulf between mother and daughter-in-law.
But it made me remember a day long ago when the gap narrowed noticeably.
I’d only been married a short time when she and I went to pick up a package at a department store. We had to wait while the item was located. When the clerk called for Mrs. Lake, neither of us responded for a moment. I finally stepped forward to answer the call and nervously explained to the clerk that I hadn’t always been a Lake so sometimes I had to remind myself that was my name.
My mother-in-law smiled gently and commented, “I haven’t been one all my life either.” Suddenly her forty years of marriage passed away. I saw her briefly as a young wife struggling with a new identity just as I was.
There were many times as the years passed when our differences created a sense of separation. At those times I often reminded myself that, “She wasn’t always a Lake either.”
And now the moment has come when I’ve caught up to her. I’m the one who looks back over more than forty years of marriage, and I’m the one who remembers when I wasn’t a Lake (even though it is a dim memory, for sure). The pendulum has swung and I’m perfectly delighted to be carrying on the tradition. Someone has to keep track of those silly birds and their antics.
Susan E L Lake 
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