The only siblings I have are half-siblings. My nuclear family would have been an extra-suffocating threesome. Instead, I have an interesting brother and sister, in-laws, and darling nephews.
For the first time ever I was taking the family on the road. We stayed with my in-laws, which on life's list of experiences ranks right below sitting in a tub full of scissors.
I've always assumed that my parents and my in-laws would live with me when I get older and have children. I just assume it will happen and that it's the right way to do things. It's a deeply Indian custom - that you kind of inherit your parents and your spouse's parents and you take care of them eventually.
Having a baby changes the way you view your in-laws. I love it when they come to visit now. They can hold the baby and I can go out.
If I tell a man he needs to quit his soul-sucking job, he has to go home and fight with his wife or fight with his parents and fight with his in-laws and fight with everybody, because men aren't supposed to be happy; they're supposed to do well.
Frankly, it's depressing, each night sleeping in someone else's home. I miss having a roof to my name. Our situation isn't an 'All in the Family' cliche, but it's still easy to see reality in plain terms: I live with my in-laws, and I can't say when that will change.
American couples have gone to such lengths to avoid the interference of in-laws that they have to pay marriage counselors to interfere between them.
When I was first pregnant, which was, let's see, in nineteen-eighty-three - I remember wearing a regular bathing suit to my in-laws' pool. It was just like a spandex one-piece, completely modest, and yet people were looking at me like it was obscene.
Thankfully I have an ecosystem of in-laws, parents and husband, who are my rocks.
I have a great husband, great parents and in-laws, and I have help with a nanny. It's not easy, but there are others who do it every day and don't have a high-profile job as I do.