Traveling With My Mother-in-Law Made Us Closer Than Ever

I first met Kathy, the woman who would later become my mother-in-law, on a small island in the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles from where I, she, or her son grew up.

My future husband, Uriah, and I were living on Kaua’i at the time, and he had the brilliant-yet-terrifying idea that we should have both our moms out to visit at the same time so everyone could get to know one another. The week before everyone arrived, I was a jumble of anxiety. I was conscious of Uriah’s strong bond with his family and eager to make a good impression.

It turned out that all of my sleepless nights were for naught. Kathy welcomed me into the family with the warmest embrace, both figuratively and literally. She and I clicked immediately, and I couldn’t believe how comfortable I felt around her.

A trip to Morocco made our relationship even stronger

It was September 2023 when we first met, and we saw each other again the next month for a few days in Colorado, Uriah’s home state. Then, when we got married in Sicily in May the next year, we all spent a week in Sicily together.

Despite having spent a cumulative total of less than three weeks together, we had already established a close rapport. But it wasn’t until we traveled together to Morocco this past February that our bond truly solidified.

Uriah and I had just bought a house in Italy, and Kathy traveled with us to Sardinia for the closing. Neither of us had ever owned a house before, and I had the wild idea of flying to Morocco to shop for embroidered bedspreads and other unique accents to make it our own.

I had memories from a trip 10 years earlier of all the gorgeous, colorful textiles and rainbow mosaic lamps casting textured light over the chaotic medina. I sent Kathy a cheap flight I’d found from Milan to Marrakesh and asked if she was up for it. She agreed without hesitation.

When we first stepped out of the taxi in downtown Marrakesh, the teenage daughter of our Airbnb host met us to guide us to our apartment. As I rushed to follow her through the labyrinthine medina, I realized Kathy and Uriah were getting swallowed into the crowd, and I gestured to our host that we should let them catch up.

I felt a touch of trepidation when I saw their nervous faces among the throng of people, and I wondered briefly if I’d made a mistake taking them somewhere that could pose such a sensory overload. I was relieved when we were all safely in our Marrakesh apartment.

Over the next few days, Kathy and I pored over fabrics in stall after stall with endless bolts of silk jacquard, cotton, wool, and tightly-woven berber in every color imaginable. Uriah would lose interest and leave us to our own devices, while we looked at dozens of textures and patterns before choosing our favorites and arranging to have them cut and hemmed.

We open up to each other and have shared beautiful memories

The next week, in Essaouira, we spent more time one-on-one as the 20th place we’d stopped to look at throw pillows proved to be the final straw of Uriah’s house-shopping patience.

Leaning back on cushions in a café overlooking the ocean, we spoke not as mother- and daughter-in-law with all the fraught, implied complications those relationships often hold, but as two women sharing stories of love, loss, and heartache. Uriah would find us sometimes, swept up in these discussions, and groan, “Are you two crying again?”

Somewhere in the magic of Morocco, between a crowded medina in Marrakesh and a crimson sunset over a beach in Essaoira, Kathy and I shared experiences that were ours alone. We packed them with us like souvenirs when we flew our separate ways, but the memories we’d woven together were in patterns far more intricate and colorful than the textiles we chose. Like the postcards Kathy always buys but doesn’t send because they’re too beautiful, we’d keep them with us always.