I know that my father tells everyone in the village about me and my wife. He never liked my daughter-in-law, and neither do I, apparently. How else can we explain his refusal to see our kindness and help?
He’s an old-school man, the kind of man who says things used to be better, women worked in the fields, and cancer didn’t exist. You can’t prove to him that it wasn’t better, that’s why women died early, and cancer just wasn’t diagnosed. But the most interesting thing is that he is one of those people who live in his own little village, in his own little world, where there is only him and the vegetable garden. He literally lives from year to year to show off his crops and sell them. He plants and grows it himself, goes to the woods to mushroom and sell it, picks berries and sells them too, goes to apple orchards and illegally picks apples to sell to the cider factory… He has no idea what life is like in the city and doesn’t want to know it. And he doesn’t recognize any work except for the vegetable garden and around the house. That’s why my wife and I are lazy to him.
Anna actually sews clothes, and I sell cars – too incomprehensible for Dad’s mind, but we get paid a lot of money for our work. Thanks to this, we have a great apartment in town, the kids are growing up well off, and we can afford red caviar not just for New Year’s Eve. What’s more, we always help Anna’s parents (really loving and grateful people) and Dad. We pay for rebuilding his house, for a new fence, for a well. But he thinks that it is all pennies and he just did not have time to do it, and he looked at the prices and realized that in life he would not allow himself such a thing.
In the village, he complains about us all, that we do not want to dig his gardens, but he has a roof covered, the house is covered with siding and we order him the wood, and not he stands and cut them.
So where is the fair gratitude?
