Quick: what do you think of when you hear the words “mother-in-law?”  If Woman Hitler comes to mind (an actual anagram of the letters in “mother-in-law”—try it!), you are not alone.  Judging from the standard depiction of mothers-in-law in jokes and movies, most people would feel more comfortable asking a known serial killer to Sunday dinner than their better half’s dear old Mom.

The classic mother-in-law vision is of a nightmarish, emasculating woman.  She’s typified by the character Aurora Greenway, masterfully (mistressfully?) portrayed by Shirley MacLaine in the movie Terms of Endearment.  Greenway cut her son-in-law down to size at every opportunity as if he were a stalk of wheat waiting to be scythed and always followed up with a priceless “What did I say?” expression.  This Mother’s Day, Jane Fonda will be giving MacLaine a run for the money playing the title role in a new movie called Monster-in-Law.  Can you guess what it’s about?

My own mother-in-law, S—, couldn’t be more different from these despotic, controlling women, and not just because she can’t emasculate someone who was never masculated, to coin a term.  S— is a genuinely nice person.  Getting her as an in-law when I married my husband K— was kind of like finding a great two-for-one deal at the supermarket.

The fact that not a lot of people seem to feel about their mother-in-law the way I do about mine gave me the idea of writing a sort of homage to S—.  From another perspective, it’s a primer on how to be a great mother-in-law.  Without further ado, here are My Eleven, aka eleven simple rules for being a mother-in-law easy to love, based on S—‘s example:

#1 She has never stated or even implied that I’m not good enough for her son.  To be honest, I think she’s grateful and more than just a tad surprised he didn’t end up with a psycho for a wife, since by all accounts he dated a long string of them before me.  That’s good, because it makes my flaws pale in comparison.

#2 She has never criticized me—at least not to my face.  If she’s never done so privately and vocally, she’s in line for sainthood.  It could just be that she’s adhering to that old rule, “If you can’t say anything nice about a person, don’t say anything at all,” but whatever the reason for her lack of flak, I’m grateful.

#3 She recognizes how pathetically helpless we are and pitches in.  It started with making sure our wedding wasn’t embarrassingly absent of all attention to detail, and she just kind of kept going.  Without her, we’d have no curtains and we’d have to walk around in the dark so the neighbors wouldn’t see us in our underwear.

#4 She watches football.   Surely I don’t have to explain this one…

#5 She’s easy.  By that I mean that she’ll try most things once, including everything I’ve ever put on her plate made from tofu.

#6 She’s not too uptight to swear now and then and doesn’t look at me disapprovingly when I do.  It’s hard to give examples without crossing the line of propriety in print, so I’ll just let this one stand as self-evident.

#7 She will babysit.  Of course, by “baby” I mean “cat,” and by “sit” I mean “dote continuously for up to two weeks.”  In applying this to your own life, substitute for the first part any dependent creatures you happen to have in your household: human children, reptiles, chickens, houseplants, an ant farm—you get the picture.

#8 She stays up to date with all vaccinations so we never have to worry about her getting any transmittable diseases from our felines (see #7).  In the case of people with actual human offspring, a Grandma with a full roster of shots will relieve them of the guilt they’d feel if she got bumped off by a case of chicken pox Junior brought home.

#9 Occasionally, she knowingly sets a bad example.  Many is the time I’ve heard S— say with respect to her husband: “I married him for better or worse, but not for lunch.”  How many mothers-in-law actually give their sons’ wives ammunition in the work-avoidance war?  She’s worth her weight in gold.

#10, She’s a good sport.  She’s reading this.  In fact, to my knowledge she’s read every TMF, and despite the fact that her son is the involuntary star of the series, she still speaks to me.  Now that I think of it, she even seems to get a strange pleasure out of them…

#11 She will sleep in the spare bedroom where the strange things are stored.  In my case, this means the snakeskins, wasp nests and animal skulls I’ve collected tramping through the woods over the years.  My husband banished them from our bedroom (on the grounds that they’re “creepy”) and our living room (on the grounds that other people might see them and think we’re creepy), which is why they’re in the guest room.  I was enough of a thoughtless boob to not even realize that porcupine incisors might not be the last thing S— would want to see before trying to drift off to sleep until she’d been using the guest room for a couple of years.  When I finally asked her about them, she said, “After I turn out the light, I can’t see them, so they don’t bother me.”

Wow!  I wouldn’t be able to say that about, say, a bunch of wide-eyed Hallmark collectible figurines.  If I had to sleep in the same room with anything marketed as “adorable,” “sweet,” “cute-as-a-button,” “fuzzy-wuzzy” or “angelic,” I’d be having waking nightmares about it the next day.  You can see why I’m in such awe of S—.

So this Mother’s Day, if your mother-in-law is a Woman Hitler, do as Ann Landers always suggested: copy this article and mail it to her anonymously.  But think this one through first.  If you’re married to her only son or daughter, she’ll probably figure out who sent it.  In that case, enlist your father-in-law to give it to her instead.  He’s probably wanted to do something like that for years.  And if your mother-in-law already adheres to these eleven simple rules, show her your appreciation by genuflecting in her presence, or at least by taking her out to brunch and presenting her with a special gift.  I suggest something nice from the taxidermist…but use your best judgment.