Pareidolia : Seeing shapes or faces in cloud, marbles, sand etc

I thought everybody can see shapes and figures on the walls of the bathroom, toilet and also in the clouds because I could. Some of them on the bathroom walls look specifically as if of some great painter’s masterpiece!
When I didn’t have nothing much to do on summer holidays, I don’t have friends of my age in the neighborhood to play with and even if there were, I was not allowed to go to any house nearby to play, I will sit on the veranda or under the shade of the huge mango tree in the front yard & look at the white clouds floating in the blue sky. After some time, all those white clouds will become some kind of animals, birds, flowers, angels, devils etc. I could spend lot of time just watching the clouds and figuring out different shapes of figures.
One day at school, when I was in sixth grade, perhaps ten or eleven years old, one of my friends asked, “what are you looking at the sky?”
I pointed to the sky & said,
“see, that left end, you can see two sheep. On the right of that an angel flying over it. At the bottom of all these, if you look sharply you may see a horse’s head too.”
She looked to where I pointed at and then looked at me with a vacant gaze.
“I can see only white clouds, I can’t see any shapes as you mentioned.”
She complained.
I tried my best to show her what I saw in the clouds. But all in vain.
Then she told me that secret.
“Gigi, I can’t see any shape in those clouds. But I can tell you a secret my Grandma told me.”
I was curious.
“Grandma told me those who can see shapes in the clouds will get a very loving and caring mother-in-law.”
She told me.
It didn’t make a eleven year old girl’s Heart flutter!
Other than my brothers made fun of me when they are mad at something, they called “your father-in-law” & “your mother-in-law” just to poke fun of me. So I always thought these two are some aggressive characters who wouldn’t like their daughter-in-law or son-in-law.
So when my friend told me this secret, somewhere down in my heart I kept that secret to remember, when the time comes.
Years passed bye.
I got married when I passed 21+. My mother-in-law was very classy, stylish and always dressed well. She was in her fifties when I became her daughter-in-law. She had a sense about matching her clothes. She was a good organizer and a good cook. Only things I knew to make at that time were coffee & tea, but very perfect ones. That’s how I survived the beginning of my married life at in-laws’ with my coffee & tea.
I tried to see my in-laws as my own parents. My father-in-law was more than happy to treat me as a daughter, since he had only boys. But my mother-in-law started to see me as a rival or competition.
Often I thought about the secret I kept in my heart. I am a “Pareidolia” person, seeing shapes in everything , clouds, walls, or anything I see.
So what ?
That’s a lie.
It doesn’t make that person to be loved by the mother-in-law to the moon and back.
For twenty years, I tried my best to make her love me as a daughter or a good daughter-in-law. But all my trials simply failed. Then I stopped loving her. But I promised myself, I love my husband very much. She is the lady who brought him to this world & took care of him as her son, so for that gratitude I promised myself, I will be there for her, I will treat her well, I will never take it upon her my disappointment. I will be decent and classy to her.
That’s what I did. She was with me when she became old. She died when she was 100+ years old.
I kept my promise to myself. I was decent.
I made sure, she is comfortable till the end.
She was conscious till her last breath.
So I learned my lesson.
Pareidolia has nothing to do with winning the love of in-laws!