We build a house

Where I grew up in the big city it was considered bad form to live in your parents' neighborhood after you got married. Where my husband grew up in a rural area, you had to be careful of what you said because so many people were related to each other, and they knew everyone else's business. It was small town entertainment.

When we built our house, it was about 1/2 mile down the road from my in-laws. I felt desperate to establish ourselves independently. There was no legal agreement; my husband just went to work as he always had, and the work was hard and physical. My father in law was headed eventually for a hip replacement, so he was unable to do a lot of hard physical labor. The milking parlor was a wreck. The cows were all different breeds, and they were still using milk cans, siphon tubes and bucking bales by hand.

The place wouldn't have lasted much longer; it wasn't paying its own way, and the free labor of the six oldest children was coming to an end. There was a change of life baby who was one year old, and she wasn't going to be much help for years. So there was my husband and his limping father. We were paid enough every month to cover our mortgage with $20 left over. Fortunately we had enough to eat, and we didn't get sick or injured.

We paid someone to frame the house, with a down payment earned by my husband during a good year of leasing someone else's land before we were married. I wired it for electricity, and my husband put up sheet rock and did the plumbing. We hired the laying of the cinderblock basement to two retired bachelor brothers, and got a loan to put in a well. As a wedding present, my in laws paid off the mortgage for the one acre we lived on. We hired the roof done and moved in. It took us another 25 years to finish it. My father in law built a set of stairs going into the basement, and my brother in law helped me put in the electrical panel. My sisters in law helped install insulation in the walls.

I went to work at the local county court, and later for the community college.

No one would talk to me about finances, including my husband.

We take up residence in the mouse hotel

My husband found a little place for us to live in that hadn't been inhabited for two years and was torn down following our nine-month stay. It had four tiny rooms, including a living room with an oil stove and a broken down couch; a bedroom the size of our bed; a bathroom, and a kitchen that was not conducive to either cooking or eating. The place was overrun with mice and was a haven for spiders. I made new curtains to replace the green shower curtains in the kitchen, and I built a book shelf out of 2x6's. I tore the contact paper that served for wall paper off the walls, and tried to clean the embedded grease. I was not successful.

I had to go to my mother in law's to do the washing, and I helped with the garden. We didn't have a telephone for three months. My husband was gone 10-12 hours a day. He got a job running a sweet corn picker for the local food processors so we would have some cash to live on. I was desperately homesick and isolated.

My husband's parents were good to me, but they were about to go under. Farming wasn't what everyone did anymore, and it wasn't easy to stay in business unless you were businesslike, which my father in law wasn't. His real love was gardening, and the farm was too big and too complicated for someone trying to make a larger living.

My mother in law kept the books so well that the place stayed in business until my husband returned. But she kept the decision making, as well as the bank statements, hidden. I found out why much later on. There was no discussion as there ought to be between business partners, but I didn't know any better, and my husband accepted it as he had the excessive responsibility of his youth to keep his father's farm going.

I meet & marry my husband

I met my husband when I was 18. I was a university sophomore in a Spanish class that was mostly girls. He ended up living on the same block I did. He sat next to me in class and was my Sunday School teacher. I never could resist him, although it took three years and some growing up on my part before I finally said yes. We were married in the big city near my family, and for our honeymoon made the long drive to the rural dairy farm near his family.

My family is warm, harmonious, helpful, communicative, musical and artistic. My husband's family of five daughters and two sons is warm, loud, mocking, determined, and some of them hold mighty grudges. It was not only culture shock for me, it was the type of shock that made me determined, on my part, to establish our own little family's independence even though we lived close to his parents and eventually to the brother and sister that never really grew up.

The four sisters-in-law I loved best knew better than to hang around, so they married and moved far away. I've never forgiven them. Although what has happened to change the family dynamics in the past few years could never have happened without them.

We lived in an abandoned farm house several miles from the dairy. I had no idea how isolated and poverty stricken we really were; I was in love and that carried us through the first few years. My father in law regarded me as something special because I 1) came from a well-off family; 2) My own excellent father was well respected in the church and community; and 3) I had a bachelor's degree. Plus, I constantly rewarded his solicitations of attention with the unthinking admiration he craved.

This protected me for quite awhile.

I try to make sense of what has happened

I'm starting this blog to review the 35 years of my happily married life, overshadowed by the pathology of a narcissistic father in law who we are tied to legally and financially and who lives close by.

I want to start at the beginning with what I have learned and am still learning.