We got divorced a year ago. I never understood what happened. My husband somehow casually, over dinner, said he was leaving to another woman, has no claims to our housing, and will rewrite his part of the privatized apartment to our ten-year-old son.
The next day my husband packed his things and left. I thought that his beloved had some kind of special mansion, a lot of money, model-like appearance, and so on. But no. Helena (that’s her name) – the most average, the same year with me a woman without his own apartment and enviable wealth. Now the new-found family is squatting in the same apartment with my ex-boyfriend’s parents.
More than me, my mother was worried, saying, how come, the child will grow up without a father (as if she forgot that her daughter also grew up without a father, but not with ten, and from six years). But the most frustrating thing was my mother’s firm conviction that I was to blame for my husband’s departure (I did not see, did not keep silent, did not please, did not cuddle).
Soon I caught a cold. Sick I always short, but “fun”, with a fever under forty and a complete indifference to food, I just need to lie down, sleep, and from the products, except for tea, kefir and fruit, do not need anything. And so it was this time. My body was splitting apart, I lay down or curled up and clenched my teeth, suffering a headache.
My son was independent enough to run to the store, buy everything he needed, and lead a fairly autonomous dietary lifestyle. He made dumplings for himself, and put a cup with kefir and sliced fruit near my bed. So we lived safely for three days, before my mother found out about the disease.
No, she didn’t rush over like an ambulance, she asked my grandson (my phone was off) how we were doing, and when she found out that Jack was eating convenience foods from the store, she gave me the kind of scolding I had never received. “Bad mother”, “that’s why your husband left you”, “it’s just a fever”, “how hard can it be to cook dinner for a child?”, and so on.
I was patient to the last, but then I reminded my mother that her husband left her too, the wife who cooks and serves her husband three times a day, ironing shirts, pants and other clothes, blowing dust off, taking him to work and pleasing her “endlessly tired” husband when he comes home from work, in any condition.
Mom, of course, didn’t expect such a rebuff, the only thing she said was: “Well thanks daughter, I look forward to your apology!” After that – disconnected the phone for two days.
I wasn’t going to apologize. For what? Mom couldn’t take it anymore and started calling Jack, saying, “Talk to your mom, tell her to repent, etc. My son dutifully told me his grandmother’s requests, after which I warned her that one more conversation with Jack about this topic would put her number on his blacklist.
I don’t think our confrontation with my mother will last forever, but for now we are not in touch. I think she’s wrong, and I’m not going to apologize for my mom’s own forced reminder of the events in her biography.
