What My Irish Mother-in-Law Taught Me About Life

Getting along with one’s mother-in-law, learning from her lifestyle, translated…

My mother-in-law really knows how to enjoy her life, she’s from Ireland, for her, the most important thing in her life is drinking teas.

Like most Irish mothers, she’d believed, that a hot cup of tea can chase away all the worries of the day, no matter if the weather’s awful outside, or if you’d had a bad day. There would always be tins and tins of teas on her kitchen counter, fresh milk and sugar in her kitchen; the moment the children walked in, she’d immediately served up a cup of hot black tea with milk, and, no matter how big the news, her children would have to wait until they’d drunk that cup of tea first.

the bear necessities of life, photo from online…

My mother-in-law’s attentiveness toward life is not restricted to only the teas. She’d loved gardening too, she’d told me, that as they first moved into their house, there was, NOTHING in the backyards. And now, there are, rows of edible herbs, several bushes of roses, and a row of fully blooming lavenders too. On top of that, she’d had people built up a small cabin in the backyard, with a few chairs, and a fireplace. After supper, she’d loved having the family head to the small cabin in her yard to have some desserts. If the weather was especially cold, then, she’d bring out that aged Irish whiskey, put on some folk music, invited everybody to dance and drink.

Although there’s NO extravagant couch and garage in my mother-in-law’s house, and it’s a forty-minute drive to the city, but, every time when I’d gone with my husband to visit, I’d not felt, that there was anything lacking in life, nor did I feel that life in the countryside is boring.

On my mother-in-law, I saw, the attitude of a woman who’s focused on living her life; in my mother-in-law’s house, I felt the happiness of being surrounded by warmth. She let me know, that life can be so simple, that all we need, is a good cup of tea, a house to live in, and, having everybody in the family around, this, is the richest kind of life.

So, this, is the family values that your mother-in-law had taught you, she’d kept her life so simple, with only needs, and no wants, and, you’d learned from her lifestyle that you don’t need that much materialism to be happy, that a simple life with the ones you love is way better than having houses of materials.