My mother comes from a large family. She had six siblings, but now only three remain. Mum and one of my aunts both live in the same village. They work during the summer and get by in the winter on what they’ve earned in the busy season. Like most people here, we all keep a vegetable patch that we tend together. Family get-togethers are a big part of our lives.
Mum’s other sister lives in the city. She has a spacious flat and a lovely house near the lake. Her husband works as a managing director at a construction firm. Of course, they didnt always live like this. They used to live in the countryside as well, and my mum and aunt always helped them however they could. But after they found their feet and settled down, they seemed to forget all about us.
One day, quite by accident, Mum heard that her sisters daughter, Emily, had got married. She was taken aback at first, but then pretended she already knew, just to save face in front of the neighbours. After all, who wouldnt feel embarrassed to discover that their own sister hadnt invited them to her daughter’s wedding?
When Mum got home, she told all of this to Aunt Margaret. Margaret was just as shocked and deeply hurt too. Together, they decided they should ring and at least offer their congratulations, hoping perhaps it would make her sister feel some regret. But all they got was a brief, cold Thank you, before she hung up the call.
Still, something must have stirred in her, because the next weekend she turned up out of the blue, bringing Emily and her new husband along. They arrived with cuts of expensive beef and a bottle of fine wine. But my mother, still wounded by the slight, refused to let them stay. She told them outright: since they were too embarrassed to invite us to a restaurant because were villagers and they see themselves as proper city folk, then they had no business coming to our home now.
My aunts husband admitted they were, in fact, ashamed of usand even went so far as to say that if we ever set foot in a restaurant with them, the whole place would reek of bacon. That hurt Mum deeply. She told them to leave and never come back, and that she never wanted to set eyes on them again. Aunt Margaret, of course, stood by Mums side and agreed she wanted nothing more to do with them, either.
