Trapped!

Why is it that whenever I try a little bit to ease back into the relationship with my mother-in-law, something backfires?

I had to get my brakes fixed this weekend and hubby was working. I asked if one of my in-laws could pick me up from the mechanics and drop me off when it's all done. When I got to the mechanic's shop, my mother in law was already there weeping in front of the mechanic. Said mechanic says "why would God do this to you and your family?" Argh! Wrong thing to say dude! A flood of tears came and she dramatically replied "oh T! I don't know!"

Let's move now to act 2.

We are driving to Wally world and she proceeds to tell me that she and her husband fight all the time now and that with Steve's death, it's going to break the two of them up. Now my relationship with hubby has grown dramatically but how can I throw that into her face? Just because she chooses to blame everything on the demise of her relationship, why should I subject myself to listening to this crap? BOTH of them need to seek an outside third party if they want it to work out between them. When hubby and I lost our first child, it was devastating on us but it brought us closer.

Now the final clincher; the grand finale.

Driving back from Garden Ridge yesterday, out of the blue, she decides that she needs to re-visit the topic of the ever popular spanking of my son. Now hubby had told dad that he did not want him to spank him at all. Here is where the "trapped" part comes into play. Whenever I am faced with a really controversial topic, I am always stuck in the car with her with no where to hide. Here is the dialog:

"K is really mad about M accusing him of spanking A"
"Have you talked to him about it since everything has happened?"
"No. It won't do any good. M will do whatever he wants"
"Don't you think it's an issue about respecting our wishes as his parents?"
"No. It's not like he beats him or anything"
"No, it's about M asking K not to touch him and he did it anyway"
"I think you are wrong"
"I think you are in no position to say aything as you had 3 boys and now you're down to one"
"I can't believe you are being so cruel"
"I can't believe how much longer you are going to continue playing the martyr!"
Silence
"If you want him to change, you have to tell him how you feel or else he won't know what's wrong and have the opportunity to do something about it. It's not fair of you to blame him for all kinds of stuff and not let him in on it. What's even more unfair is that you tell me all of this stuff and most of it has nothing to do with me. I told you I don't want to be in the middle and here we go again. . . you're assuming that I want to be here in the middle of your family's issues when in reality, my alliance sticks with M, not you"

I wasn't hurt; I was done. I'm tired of his family acting like it's acceptable to include me in on there issues of woe-as-me. M made a great point over the weekend: We are alive. I'm sorry that my brother isn't here but we need to move on. We have a life and he would want us to live it, not dwell on what we don't have.

We drove home in silence and then I brought up another firey topic but I will save that for tomorrow!