My husband has a younger brother, Harry, who recently turned 30, he has a family, and soon the children will leave, and he is still sitting on the neck of his parents and older brother. Harry and his wife live 90 km away from his parents, and he only visits them for groceries or to meet old friends.
As I mentioned, Harry recently had a birthday. He was turning 30, and he decided to gather his closest people at his parents’ place. The day before the holiday, Harry and his wife and my husband went to his father-in-law. While the men were doing their business, my mother-in-law and I were cleaning the apartment.
Harry’s wife was pregnant, and although the deadline was early, she refused to do any work, so all the work fell on our shoulders.
While we were marinating the duck, my father-in-law went to town with Harry and his wife to buy groceries because Harry hadn’t brought anything with him. Father-in-law needed to buy some spare parts for the car, so he took a lot of money with him.
And now we already had huge bags of food. With each bag, my mother-in-law and I were wildly surprised, because there was not the usual set of products, but mostly delicacies. It was a discovery for us that Harry could spend so much money, or rather that he could earn it at all, because he changed jobs more often than socks.
The surprise did not last long. When the mother-in-law asked if the father-in-law had bought the necessary spare parts, he said that Harry had left his card at home, and he had to pay for the groceries, only when the son was going to return the money, the father-in-law was not clear.
The holiday was a great success. Both the birthday boy and the guests liked it. I felt sorry for the mother-in-law, because they earned every penny by hard work, but they were happy at the holiday most of all. Going into the kitchen during the celebration, I heard Harry’s wife talking to someone on the phone and saying that they saved a lot on the holiday, because the father-in-law paid for everything, and he would not ask his son for money.
I told my husband about what I had heard, and he said that he did not want to upset his parents and decided to talk to his brother. I hope that this conversation will bear fruit, because it hurts me to see how my parents-in-law try for their son, and he constantly squanders their money.
