That's how I met my mother in law

Here’s a verse from The Echo Song (Sipping Cider), an old camp song:

That's how I got (that's how I got)
My mother-in-law (my mother-in-law)
by sippin' ci- (by sippin' ci)-der through a straw.
That's how I got (that's how I got)
My mother-in-law (my mother-in-law)
(everyone) by sippin' cider through a straw.

I met my mother in law before I met my wife.

 I had been asked by Edee Seymour, a woman who was at that time, working for the Michigan Arthritis Foundation, to participate as a resource person to a Michigan Artists Calendar, a fund raising idea she had, which included giving 12 different artists each a page in a calendar, to be sold as a benefit. I was one of several people she came to for suggestions as to who should be included and what we could do to promote this item.

Along the line she scheduled a radio interview at WJZZ, Detroit’s jazz radio for well-known Detroit artist Charles McGee and me. It was on a Wednesday afternoon, and their offices were not far from my office so it would be easy.

Three weeks before the interview, I purchased a mattress from Sears, which was to be delivered on the following Wednesday, the day they delivered to my neighborhood, and I had to take off the whole day (it could have been a half day as memory fails a bit) but I booked it off. On Tuesday evening Sears called to say it would not be here and it would be another week. I changed my schedule and went to work. The following Tuesday evening, Sears called again and said it was not available but would be delivered the following Wednesday, the day of the interview.

I was upset because I had to take off a whole day but would not know when the bed would be delivered, and therefore I couldn’t do the radio show. I called Edee and explained, and she suggested she could get an apartment watcher to sit in my place and wait for Sears if they had not shown by 11:00 a.m., which was when I had to leave for WJZZ. I agreed, and Edee called my now wife, the volunteer art director for the calendar project, and asked if she knew anyone who could sit and wait for a mattress. She explained that her mother didn’t work and could be convinced to go and sit and wait for the mattress.

At 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, my now mother-in-law showed up with her violin, and told me she would wait for my mattress, and asked if she could practice her violin. I was delighted, and left her with instructions, which she followed, about the delivery.

She followed the instructions, the mattress was delivered and all was fine.

When she spoke with her daughter later that day, she said she had met an interesting man (me) and I would be a good possibility for her daughter, who I had never met. My now wife assured her I was too old for her.

The rest of the story will follow soon, but that was how I met my mother-in-law, not sipping cider through a straw.