That day my son and daughter-in-law came and handed me the keys and then took me to the notary.
I was so excited I couldn’t get a word out, so I just whispered:
– Why are you giving me such expensive gifts? I don’t need it!
– It’s a bonus for your retirement, you’ll let lodgers in it! – my son told me at the time.
At that time I did not even go to the pension fund yet! I had just been taken off work for a well-deserved retirement. And they had already decided everything without me. I started to refuse, and they told me not to argue.
With my daughter-in-law, I have not always been smooth: then calmly, then suddenly the storm starts out of the blue. And I was the culprit of the storm, and so was she. We and she adapted for a long time. We had to learn not to quarrel. We had to learn not to fight. But for the last few years, thank God, we’ve been living peacefully.
When my sister-in-law found out about the gift, she called right away and started congratulating me, and then she praised herself: “So I raised a good daughter, if she did not mind such a gift to you!” And then she said that she personally would not have accepted such a gift, and would have given it up in favor of her grandson.
I spent half the night wondering if I could get by on one pension, because I didn’t need much. In the morning, I called my grandson and began to gently probe the ground, as to whether he would mind if I make out the apartment for him. My grandson will be sixteen soon, he has to go to college, he will have a girlfriend, he can’t take her to his parents.
– Grandma, don’t worry! I want to earn my own living! – answered my grandson.
Everyone refused the apartment. I offered it to my daughter-in-law, my grandson, and even my son.
I remembered a case that happened to my elder sister: her sister-in-law got rid of her house, after which she had to move into a communal flat. She clung to that room like a drowning man to a straw.
Our uncle… He’s been gone for fifteen years, and his heirs still don’t communicate, because they couldn’t divide his property without fighting among themselves.
I once saw in a program that my mother and father signed their house over to my son, but he took it and evicted them from their home and then sold my parents’ house, leaving my father and mother on the street.
I cried… I don’t even know why, either out of gratitude or pride in my children. After I went to the pension office I found out that my pension amounted to twenty thousand, and then my son rented my apartment for thirty thousand a month. It was at that moment that I appreciated the children’s gift: it was truly royal!
