3714 Mother-in-laws

Friday, April 12, 2013

Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored.

--------------------------------------------------

I just read an old online article about things mother-in-laws should never say to their son's wife.  The comments were a litany of horror stories.

Got me thinking about my in-laws, and my relationship with SIL Hercules.  I think with Ex#2's mother I had it about as bad as any of the horror stories, and I think I've been pretty good with Hercules.

----------------------------

Ex#1's mother was pretty much a nonentity.  She was one of those quiet mouses.  We had to be very careful around her, because if she sensed the least tension anywhere, she'd burst into tears and take to her bed. She reacted to everything like an abused puppy.  She had grown up in an orphanage, a real honest-to-god orphanage!  One of those dreary stone warehouses, and no one had ever been kind to her or taught her the things you have to know to function in life.  I don't think she was bright enough to figure anything out herself.  Although her occasional jobs had been as a waitress at lunch counters in places like Woolworths, she had never learned about cooking.  Everything was boiled.  She'd throw chicken breasts, skin and all, in a pot with no seasonings, and boil the hell out of them.  Steaks were boiled.  One day she asked if I'd like her to "boil some tea" for me, and sure enough, she threw a handful of tea bags in a stewpot, and boiled them for ten minutes.  I had to drink it, or she'd have cried.  (I suggested we add a bunch of ice and sugar and make iced tea.)

Very soon after Ex#1 and I divorced (and Ex#1 had remarried within six months to a woman with three children) Ex#1's father left her.  As Ex#1 put it, "He didn't know it was so easy to change things!"

I felt SO guilty.  I don't suppose things were too bad for her, because she had two doting married sons living close by, but I don't really know.   I still feel sorry for her.

--------------------------

Ex#2's mother was my only real experience with a mother-in-law, and that was pretty bad.

When Ex#2 and I were dating, she went to mass every Wednesday and twice on Sunday.  When we announced our engagement, she started going every single day.  I naively thought she was just very religious.  After we were married, she dropped to just Sundays, and when I asked him why, Ex#2 told me that she had been going to church every day to pray that he'd break up with me.  She had always planned, since birth, for her oldest son to be a priest, so his marrying me was a blow.  And worse, I was a divorcee.  She had never said anything to him about any of that.

She hated me.  (More, I think, than she hated the woman her father had married in his 70s after her mother had died.  She despised her so much it scared me.  I'd never seen such hate for no apparent reason.)

She was the most passive-aggressive person I've ever met.  She never said anything nasty directly TO me (about me was a different story), but she made her feelings known.

She was a high-up sales rep in one of those companies that does home parties, selling jewelry.  She recruited reps, who recruited their own team of reps, and everyone climbed the management tree.  At the time I knew her, she had a huge territory, with over 200 people working directly under her.  There were prizes for the highest sales figures, and at her level the prize was a Longines watch, solid gold.  Note that the cheapest stainless steel and leather Longines today goes for over $1,200, and she was winning one, two, three gold watches a year.

She kept the first for herself.  The second went to her daughter.  Third to her foster daughter, then her other daughter-in-law, then her best friend, then her other best friend, then her cleaning lady....  At first I wasn't hurt.  She'd known all those other people longer than me.  I didn't understand until she started donating  them to the church and the nursing home for their rummage sales.  Note that the watch didn't matter to me so much.  I'm very hard on watches.  It was the outright snub.  Especially since she made it a point to tell me what she'd done with the latest, and was annoyed that I didn't tll her what a wonderful person she was for donating them.

By the way, everybody in her small town thought she was the most wonderful person because she took in a series of foster children, worked to raise money for the local catholic nursing home, and handled the church clothing donations every year.  What nobody seemed to notice is that the foster children were always teenage girls, who were expected to clean her house and take care of her kids.  Even better than free housekeepers and babysitters, since she got paid to keep them.  She stopped volunteering for the nursing home when the priest mentioned that they couldn't take people for free, no matter how much they had supported the home.  And on several occasions, I'd seen her, her friends, her daughter, and the daughter's friends sorting through the clothing donations and taking things they liked.

We were expected to dance attendance on her at every holiday, family occasion, vacation, EVERY period of time off, and random weekends when summoned because she needed our help with some project, even after we had moved halfway across the country to St. Louis.  Ex#2 was incapable of saying no.  I went literally years without seeing my mother.  He and I never had a vacation, except once when we went camping on a weekend.  (P.S.,  I hate camping, but he refused to pay for a hotel.)

And every time we visited, she had jobs for us to do.  We never had any kind of vacation, period.  Worse, we had to work harder on office projects before we left, and then play frantic catch-up when we returned, so we NEEDED some break.

Every year after Christmas she had a dinner for her sales reps, where she handed out gifts to everyone, and additional special gifts to high sellers.  Every year I spent my Christmas to New Year's "vacation" wrapping close to 300 gifts.  I am very good at gift wrapping.  I make sharp corners that I'm proud of.  But what she gave me to wrap with was scraps of used paper (often on its third or fourth go-round) that she had saved and collected over the previous year - wrinkled, torn, with scraps of tape randomly stuck to it.  The ribbon scraps were worse, and every package had to have ribbon.  It killed my back.  I hated doing it, but there was no getting out of it.  Eleven years.  At least I was able to hide in my wrapping corner on the floor for three days.

(It wasn't 'til I was much older that it occurred to me that I could have just bought several rolls of wrapping paper and ribbon on sale and taken them with me, although that would have been harder when we lived in Missouri and had to fly.)


I can't handle cold.  I get chilblains.  She always assigned us the bed in the attic.  The dusty uninsulated attic.  There were two unoccupied bedrooms downstairs (it was a big old south Jersey farmhouse) but we got the attic.  And we had to keep the door closed "so the house wouldn't lose heat".  One Christmas Ex#2 gave me a space heater so I could use it in the attic (yes, for Christmas, and so I didn't even have it for the three days we'd already been there).  Our  next visit, the space heater was gone.  His mother mentioned offhandedly that she "may have given it to" so-and-so.

So many things, but those were the things that galled me the most.  Well, actually, there was worse.  After the divorce I was expected to send Daughter to visit for a month or more every summer.  When Daughter came back from those visits, she was angry and sharp with me for another month.  I'd turn around and find Daughter glaring at me.  When she went to visit my mother in Florida, she was fine on return, but not the NJ grandmother.  I wonder what they said to her about me.

She taught her son to be deathly passive, without the strength of aggression.  Actually, that was the worst.

-----------------------------

Jay's mother died before we were married.  His father was a roll-your-eyes frustrating handful, but never nasty.  He even liked me a lot, more than Jay's ex, and said so.

-----------------------------

Anyone have any MIL stories of their own?
.

2059 Deprivation?

Repeating a post from December, 2004:

I was reading something the other day that had me thinking that I'm very fortunate in that I have everything I really need. Then I thought that all my life I've always had all the material things I've needed. I've never felt materially deprived. I've been lucky.

Then I thought a little harder, and remembered that there were many times in my life when I had next to nothing.

My entire wardrobe when I was in college took up maybe 14 inches of closet space. I wore bedroom slippers all summer one year (they were straw) because I couldn't afford to buy sandals. One Pennsylvania winter I wore a rubber raincoat over a sweater because I didn't have a coat.

Then after I graduated and began teaching, I bought my first sewing machine (used) with my first savings, and my wardrobe grew. I had to resign 2 months into my second year because pregnant women in 1966 weren't allowed to teach. I had like $200 in savings, and a husband who was away in the army. The army took $125 out of his paycheck every month and sent it to me - but he never sent another cent. Rent was $125 a month [teaching salary was $4800/year]. I ate dinner every evening at the diner around the corner from my apartment because they had a $.80 "blue plate special". That and a glass of diet shake in the morning was all I had to eat every day. I did my laundry in the bathtub because I couldn't afford the laundromat. Then, just a few weeks before the baby was due, there was a fire in the store below my apartment. Everything I owned suffered smoke damage, almost nothing could be saved, my bird died, and the day after the fire I lost the baby.

In 1968 I left Ex#1. I had $500 squirreled away in a secret savings account, in my own name, to use to move away. I got a job in a different state, and when I went to the bank to get the money, I found that my husband had gone to the bank and demanded the money, and they had given it to him. That was normal in those days - a woman's money belonged to her husband. I left with what I had in my pocket and what I could fit in my tiny car (a rear-motor Volkswagon Karmann Ghia (sp?) which meant almost no trunk and a tiny back seat, and the mice, birds, and Smokey cat took up most of that).

The new employer gave me a"per diem" allowance for six weeks while I looked for someplace to live. From that, by moving into a cheaper motel and eating in the company cafeteria, I was able to save enough for the first month's rent on a little 4-room cabin in the woods. The landlady lent me a little lamp, which I carried from room to room at night. I slept on the floor until I could afford a sofa. I slept on the sofa until I could afford a bed. I ate standing at the sink until I could afford a little table and two chairs.

Then I married husband #2, who was a tightwad. In the 70's, a working wife turned her salary over to the husband to manage. The average woman had no idea what was where moneywise. I would have had to beg for things, and I wouldn't beg, so we had no living room or dining room furniture for the first 9 years. When Daughter was born, I made her bassinet out of a laundry basket, and sewed all her baby clothes. In 1979, my monthly budget for food was $70, and I fed two adults and a child quite well on that.

When I finally left him, even though next to no money had been spent on goodies, there was strangely little to be split. I left with $19,000 (half the equity in the house, for downpayment on a small house for Daughter and me), a few shares of computer company stock, my car, and $1,500 cash. (There should have been a LOT more stock, but I didn't want to fight, so I didn't push it.) I'd picked the absolute worst time to leave - I think it was 1981 or 82 - mortgage rates were through the roof. The best I could do was 17.5% and 3 points, for a 30-year mortgage. (Honest! That was a real rate for an adjustable mortgage.)

Nonetheless, living the way same way I had been living before, and now on a low starting salary, after the first ten months I had over $10,000 in savings, over half my $19,000 salary. (The ex was paying support - we had agreed on 40% of the difference in our salaries, but I put all of that money into a separate account for my daughter's college and for emergencies.)

That was when I realized the ex must have cheated me. There should have been more when we split, given his larger salary (well over twice mine) and the way we had been living for so long.

That was the first time in my entire life that I felt that I had been deprived. Up until then, no matter how little I had, I just figured that was the way it was, and I took pride in managing with what I had. I coped. Besides, in college and in my 20's, most of my friends were in the same boat. One of my friends in college had to sell her 15-years-uncut hair to buy textbooks. I didn't even feel deprived when my visiting mother looked around my kitchen in 1979, and said "You don't have a microwave?" I didn't figure I needed one.

About the same time I was starting to look back and feel like I'd been missing something (about 1984ish), that there should have been more. There was a young woman interviewed on TV - her home had been broken into, and the thieves had taken everything. Her list included a large color TV (I had a small black-and-white), a stereo with all the goodies (I had an old one-piece hi-fi), a fox coat (my only coat was cloth), a microwave oven, a VCR (what's a VCR?), etc. The kicker was that she was about 20 years old, childless, and on welfare! I decided then and there that I was going to be deprived no longer. I had worked hard all my life, and by darn I was going to have at least what a 20-year-old on welfare has!

I put a reasonable amount into savings every month, and then the rest I spent. For the past 22 years I have treated myself well. Daughter and I took the first "luxury" vacations I had ever taken in my life - to England and Wales (3 weeks! Two of them on a houseboat on the canals), Disneyworld, Puerto Vallarta (sp?), Barbados, a dude ranch. I bought shoes. I wore store-bought clothes. I bought books!!!

My first 38 years had taught me how to be shrewd about money. I still think beauty parlors are a waste of money, still cut my own hair. I've still never been to a spa or had a professional massage. I happen to like cheap food and inexpensive restaurants. Brand names are all pronounced "ripoff". Not that I buy cheap stuff - I just don't pay for cachet.

When Jay and I got married, he was pretty well strapped. His ex had taken everything, literally everything, they had acquired in their entire relationship, even things she couldn't possibly keep or use. She threw things away rather than let him have them. She left him with a 20-year-old car (it was his first car, and he had an emotional attachment to it), and a lawn tractor, and he had to buy "her" half of the house (she'd "shopped around" for the highest appraisal). She took half the savings and checking accounts, and half the stock. She had been teaching, and all of her salary through the years had been going into a saving account in her name, untouched except for vacations. Naturally, that was all "hers". Jay just lay there and took it. I don't know why he felt guilty - this was a woman who allowed sex maybe three times a year, and had banished him to the guest bedroom because his snoring kept her awake. (It didn't take me long to realize that he had a severe case of sleep apnea, and that was when I really started to hate her. How could she not have realized that he was struggling to breathe - the sleep center clocked him at 70 episodes per hour - especially if it "kept her awake"? I don't think she cared enough.)

Anyhow, Jay was pretty much starting over when we got married, and then he lost his job 4 months later and was out of work for 9 months. We lived on my savings that year. My hard-earned money-squeezing skills came in handy, especially since Daughter had just started college - out-of-state Ivy League (Penn State), no financial aid because her father was too well off, no matter that he was contributing nothing to her costs, them's the rules durn it. When Jay went back to work, his pay was significantly higher, but he had no benefits. No problem, because he could be on my health plan.

That was enough to scare me a little. I went back into save mode. Within the next four years, we had more than tripled our savings and investments. Then he got sick. Then he died.

I still don't understand the numbers during the three years he was ill. The costs, even with health insurance, were enormous. We had my retirement check, his disability check (40% of his salary), and our investment income coming in. We had the bills going out. No matter how I run the numbers, more went out than came in, but we were never hurting to pay the bills. I can't figure it out. The only time I had to dip into capital was when I sold $20,000 of my stock to buy the handicap van. (I also borrowed $20,000 from Jay's father for the van, which I paid back at $500/month, and then in full from the life insurance.) I don't understand it. That must have been some kind of super-saving mode?!? That $500/month loan payment is the kicker. How?!?

So now I'm sitting on all that financial history. And I don't at all feel bad buying oriental rugs and fox coats [and my first fancy car!]. I saved for it. I earned it. I piled it up. I have been deprived so that now I can be indulged.
.