Bilingual

I suspect that being part of an in-law family is a little like being fluent in a second language. (I wouldn't know for sure since I speak only English fluently, but come along with me here.) It seems to me that you might enjoy the second language just fine; you may genuinely love speaking it and take pride in your skill; you even may prefer speaking it in certain circumstances or to express a particular idea because of nuances that can't be captured in English.

I know from experience that it's possible to be so comfortable and well-integrated into your in-law family that you forget you're not one of them. You adopt their mannerisms and phrases, their tastes, even their history (I tell my in-laws' family stories like they're mine and I was there, when for the most part they aren't and I wasn't!). You may even prefer the company of your in-laws when you find common interests that aren't shared by your own family.

But I imagine that even a fluent, comfortable speaker misses her native tongue and hurts for those familiar sounds in her ears, those syllables flowing so easily from her mouth -- the words she could form from the time before she has memories.

So it is that sometimes I miss the comfort of my "native" family. Not because they're better than my in-law family, but because they're more mine. They have memories of me before I even remember being me, so I see my whole life reflected when I'm with them. They speak my language, if you will. Because they were my family first. And since they don't have to move aside to make room for me there, I suspect they feel my absence more keenly.

Yes, straddling two languages can be painful. You find at times that you've forgotten the right word in both, or maybe you never learned it in either one. But I bet that anyone who knows a second language will tell you (I assume anyway --I'm not bilingual, remember?) that her world is richer for the knowing.