I am woman. Hear me meow.

Husband goes back to work tomorrow after having over a week off. I can't say I've seen much of him. Our Christmas is all travel. We hit my grandmother's, his grandmother's and my parents' all in two days and there are a LOT of people at these homes. So, no, I can't say I'm by his side the whole time. And when we've been home, he's holed himself with the XBox playing Madden.

Usually, I don't mind him doing his thing. Particularly after work, I know the guy needs to wind down a bit. He never brings crap home and, after his "alone time" he is always easy-going, helpful and generally in a good mood.

But I had my mother-in-law this week. And Husband had me doing all of the entertaining.

It started off okay. She didn't really want to do much, so I just made sure the kids didn't knock her out or annoy her too much. I cooked nice meals, made sure she had her bagels, cream cheese, soy milk and a never ending supply of coffee. I kept my bathrooms spotless and Pine-Sol fresh. We had a previous engagement at my cousin's where she was hosting a big family party for her son's 16th birthday, so she came to that. I guess she was fine (I told Husband to keep her company because I was expected to help out). There was a great spread. But then she broke a tooth off her third pastizzi. Even that didn't annoy her that much.

She was in pretty good spirits, if you don't count the bitching about her mom and siblings, but that's par for the course. She brought out her fortune telling cards, for lack of a better term. I'm not into that. I don't even read my horoscope. But I played along (unlike Husband who chuffed it off, calling it "bullhooey" or something like that). Middle Child loved the illustrations and I fostered his new interest by getting him a half-price calendar of "fantasy" illustrations (fairies, dragons, wizards, mermaids, etc).

We had a kid-friendly New Year's Eve party with friends and their children. I fast-forwarded the clocks by three hours so the kids could count down midnight at what really was 9 pm. The kids had a great time, allowing us moms to be more relaxed than usual (I had five or six drinks). The dads and my mother-in-law spent most of the three hours playing Scrabble, which is MIL's favourite game ever. My friend even said she enjoyed her company out on the porch for smoke breaks.

They left and, it's a blur how it started but, as we were tidying up, MIL got on the subject of Catholic education. She couldn't understand how intelligent people like my friends and I would subject our children to such archaic, expoitative and harmful teachings. "Frankly, it's a little hypocritical of you to call yourselves feminists and then support such a hurtful organization that may very well damage your precious children."

And it got better than that. Oh yes. She cut down just about everything I believed in and stood for. She mocked my opinions. She questioned my intelligence. She refuted my culture. She even, at one point, went on a litany of, essentially, what a shitty weak-assed woman I was. For example, she insisted that I wasn't at all close to nature and that would be my downfall. "I'm the champion recycler on my block," I argued. "I turn off the lights when I leave the room. The house is cooler than it could be in winter and warmer than it could be in summer. I walk my kids to school. I buy organic and locally when possible. Why do you say I'm not close to nature? Because I don't enjoy camping? Because I don't live near mountains and an ocean? I do the best I can with what I can."

Oh, but I fraternize with the masculine too much. Okay, I admit it. I love men. So, I disagreed with her. Women are not better than men. I was raised to believe that I was any man's equal. No, but, you see, I'm just not in tune enough with my feminine side. Huh? I'm a mother. I'm a wife. I'm a daughter, a granddaughter, a sister, an aunt, a neice. Go further. I'm creative. I'm intuitive. I'm fucking sensitive, or else I would have put my hands over my ears and walked away when she went on her rampage, just like Husband did. Don't tell me what I am and what I'm not. That was truly insulting, especially to a near 40-year-old. I'm not a child. I've had experiences and, like anyone else's, they have value. From my experiences, I have opinions which hold as much water as anyone else's.

The arguement or debate or whatever it was stemmed from the topic of organized religion, which is something I hate to discuss. I live in a community where it's nothing to blab about your church, and I find that weird and intrusive. Spirituality is a personal thing. To me, it's like telling me how you like to wipe your ass. I just don't want to know. Flip that around and I can also say I don't like to discuss my beliefs, thank you. How can I go to church and be pro-choice? Gee, I guess the same way you can protest government cutbacks to environmental issues and smoke at the same time.

She kept pressing but I wouldn't budge. All I would say is that, true, organized religion has had its moments of unholiness for certain, but billions of people in the past and present have found grace from it. For some, it gives them a set of guidelines on how to stand upright. "But that's common sense," she argued. "But some people need to be told. Not everyone is as intelligent as you are," I responded.

In the end, we saw that our feminism enacts in different ways. She wants to single-handedly change the world. And I just want to go through life doing no harm, teach that to my kids, and hope other people are doing the same. My wish is that she respects my decision as I respect and do my best to support hers. It's the womanly thing to do.