I am 40 years old and have been married for 18 of them. My husband works as a chief engineer at a large production facility, and once worked as a plumber, coming from a small town to the capital city. He didn’t go to college right away, and his family couldn’t afford to pay for it. So he got a job at the housing and utilities department.
When my mother found out who I was going to marry, she immediately cried: “Couldn’t you find anyone worse? Were all the other worthy ones taken away?” I was very offended, but after the wedding we had to live with her. My father died before that.
My husband attempted to enter the institute after all, but he could not leave the Housing and Communal Department, his superiors persuaded him to stay, Nick turned out to have a very gifted hand. He fixed everything in the apartment, but everything was different for my mother. He did not sit on her neck, as my mother liked to say, he received a stipend, worked part-time as a locksmith, and his parents helped with groceries from the province.
My mother flatly refused to register my husband, saying that she wasn’t going to risk the apartment, as if he were not my son-in-law, but a con artist. But when she found out that I was pregnant, she couldn’t help but say: “Who are you going to have a baby with, the plumber? I thought you’d come to your senses. The saddest part was that my husband heard it all. I was very ashamed. Then he begged the authorities in the housing department for a room in the dormitory (which my mother called a “shack”), and we moved in. My daughter was born there, too.
Three years after graduation, my husband got a senior position in the company, and we were able to buy an apartment. My mother never visited us, pride doesn’t allow it. I visited her and my daughter on my own, even on my birthday. It was good that my husband understood and didn’t interfere.
Now my mom is bugging me that my husband can’t come and help her. I don’t blame him, he once said that he didn’t mind if I gave my mom money, but he would never cross the threshold of her house himself. He said: “Maybe if she’d apologized right then and there, I would have understood. But now… Half my life is gone. She was a stranger to me. And there’s no reason to make things right now.”
I feel sorry for my mother, but she still thinks that she was right then.
