I haven't written about this before. It's kind of a difficult topic.
Before I write anything, I want to say that I love and respect my mother-in-law. She's an amazing woman. But I don't think that I was the ideal (理想） daughter-in-law (in my case 嫁) that she was hoping for.
My husband is the only son. He has two older sisters. It was understood （当たり前な事）that my husband would take over (後継ぎ) the family business when he came back from studying English in the U.S.
That's how we met. My husband came to the same university that I attended in Texas. I was studying psychology (心理学), and he studied English. He asked me to marry him, and I happily answered yes, even though I knew nothing about Japan. I couldn't speak Japanese. I didn't know anything about Japanese customs or manners. I didn't know what 長男 meant. Or 嫁. Or 後継ぎ. I only knew that I loved him and wanted to be with him. I thought he would be a good father. (I was right!)
My own family in Texas was very open to outsiders. My parents loved my (then) Japanese boyfriend. Of course my mother worried about me going to live so far away, but she trusted him. She already thought of him as her son.
Before my husband's parents knew about me, their oldest daughter announced that she was going to marry a man from Chad, a country in Africa. She had been in France studying, and she met my brother-in-law there. He was also in France studying.
This happened about a year before I came to Japan, and my husband hadn't told his family about me yet. His family is pretty traditional and conservative. My brother-in-law was maybe not the husband they had always imagined for their eldest daughter. My husband's parents had to stretch their hearts to accept this unexpected new family member.
I think that's why it was such a shock when my husband told his parents about me. Another foreigner! What?! His father asked him, "If I tell you that you can't marry her, will you obey me?" My husband told him, "No, I will marry her anyway." So his father told him, "Well, OK. In that case, I won't fight against it." お父さん even bought me an airplane ticket to come to Japan and meet the family!
But my mother-in-law had more trouble accepting the idea of 2 foreigners in the family. She was trained from when she was a child to worry about what others' think (周りの目を気にする).
The first time she met me, she couldn't look at me. She sat with her back towards me. She wouldn't speak to me. At the time I didn't understand, and my heart was broken. I cried and cried afterwards. No adult had ever been unfriendly to me before in my life, so it was a shock. It was especially painful because I had been looking forward to meeting my husband's parents so much. I couldn't speak Japanese at all. I had practiced and practiced "Yoroshiku onegaishimasu," and I that's all I could say.
My relationship with my mother-in-law had a very bumpy (ガタガタ?) start. But as the years passed, and as I learned to speak Japanese, I understood how difficult my appearance (出現) must have been for her, especially so soon after accepting another foreigner into the family as her eldest daughter's husband. I learned about my mother-in-law's childhood--growing up during a war with my country--and realized how painful it must have been to stretch her heart to fit me in!
お父さん passed away many years ago. お母さん is 93 years old now. I love her and respect her, and I admire her ability to adapt and change to a new world that she couldn't imagine when she was a young woman growing up as the daughter of a farmer. She is very kind to me and my African brother-in-law. And she loves all her grandchildren very much. (She has 7 grandchildren, and 4 great-grandchildren).
It's not Mother's Day yet, but お母さん、ありがとう！
How did it go for you when you first met your husband or wife's parents
Or how did it go when you met your child's future husband or wife