THE MOTHER-IN-LAW Survival Guide

Ding-dong, she's here! But fear not-so are we, with advice on managing this singular relationship with grace, humor, and lots of heart.

- RORY EVANS

My mother-in-law was the easiest person to buy presents for. All she ever wanted was an abundance of alone time with my husband, Jamie. One year, she actually asked for 36 holes of golf with him, and only himwhich shakes down to at least eight hours, not including the inevitable extra few hours practicing their swings on the range beforehand or tossing back a few drinks at the 19th hole afterward. She really adored him-drinking up time with him but also just plain drinking with him.

Do I even need to say that that situation is the opposite of what exists in my own family, where long stretches of together time happen only with a TV and a Coke Zero nearby? Which is why it struck me as so foreign and unexpected and I'll say it!wrong. Of course, it wasn't wrong; it was just different from what I was used to. Families are microcultures, explains Christine E. Kunkle, PhD, a professor in communication studies at West Virginia University who has researched family and mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationships. "Our patterns of behavior, our ways of doing rituals-it's like water to a fish," she says. "You don't necessarily notice it because you're swimming in it all the time." But when you're dropped into someone else's water, you notice every little difference, every tiny little bothersome bit of flotsam.

To further that analogy, your fishbowl probably looks very different from your mother-in-law's due to generational differences. "I had to work all the time when my kids were little," my friend Allie (not her real name) says.