My MIL was not a tall woman, and when I met her she was twice the weight she should have been. She was a brilliant, observant, tender hearted person who had suffered more in her life than anyone ever knew.
She grew up in one of the country's big cities, with a mother who was widowed when she was two years old. Her mother, with ambition before her time, wanted more than to be a secretary at minimum pay, and became a medical researcher for a doctor's office. She never remarried. She traveled the world extensively. She sent her young daughter to stay with her parents in a rural town each summer.
When my MIL was nine years old, a teacher wrote a note to her mother that she was evasive and not very smart. She may have been evasive in self defense, but the teacher missed something major. MIL graduated from high school when she was 16, and from U.C. Berkeley in chemistryf when she was 19. Along the way, she spent a year in a sanatorium after being diagnosed with tuberculosis when she was ten or 11 years old. There are signs that she was most likely abused somewhere along the way.
When she was 19, she met her husband, a Marine paratrooper come home from the war. They had a whirlwind courtship, and she was swept off her feet. He can be charming. They married and he went to college to get an agriculture degree. They began a life that set the standard for the next 30 years: one step ahead of subsistence living. She had two children while he was at college, an older sister and my husband, and then they drove toward what they thought would be a better life farming. They didn't get to the coast like they planned; they stopped somewhere along the way, found the soil was good, that there was water, and land for purchase.
With $3,000 borrowed from her grandparents, they bought their first 40 acres and a basement house. It was a long hard grind from there on. They had a small derelict dairy and could not support themselves with it. FIL and MIL both worked off farm to make ends meet. Her ownership of the checkbook began here; it meant the bills were paid and nothing unnecessary dared show up on an invoice.
She never did get along all that well with her determined and independent minded mother. While it was a relief for her to be married and away, it was a struggle all her married life to keep from depression. After what I have learned, I can understand it. In her papers after her death were copies of a number of articles on dealing with depression. She fought overweight, and finally gave up; it was only in the last year of her life that the cancer that killed her brought her down to her pre-marriage size, and her extra weight probably gave her more time.
Her children remember her differently. It surprised me to discover that the sister most like her mother in many respects got along better with the father. This sister learned at an early age how to handle him by standing up for herself firmly and kindly, and by living a life otherwise above reproach (making him look good). It was a shock when this sister eventually divorced her own husband, who cannot be observed without the label of narcissist being applied as well. It may be that she learned her lessons too well, and attracted a man who tried to live an inauthentic life as a straight husband and father and then finally gave up on it. At least he can be considered more honest than his former FIL.
The other sisters remember their mother as being aloof, overwhelmed, resisting society, lacking in warmth and self-respect, with some quirks and oddities that were amplified by her isolation and poverty. She had no one to turn to but herself, and she kept her own counsel for many years. My husband remembers her as being ineffectual in controlling her children, but someone you could converse with in a way his father could not. In her brilliance, she must have been very lonely with a husband like that. It was only in the later years of her life that she realized she actually was valued by the rural community at large, gained the friendship and admiration of her children, and was beloved of the youngest sister, whom she loved in a way she had earlier been unable to express.
When she brought her mother home to die, after several years of caring for her, MIL inherited a great deal of money. After many years of poverty it took her years to come to terms with spending it. She didn't go crazy and waste it, but in fact lost track of some of it, which we found later in executing her trust. She began to contribute to her grandchildrens' college and missionary funds, and other causes, mostly educational and religious, that were beneficial to those who received them. Very few people ever knew how much money she had.
But her husband did. She purposely kept from him the value of the farm property they held together, so he imagined that only she had money. He tried to wheedle money and property out of her, but the damage was done; their relationship was irrevocably changed. He knew she was no longer dependent on him. She bought a car (which he made fun of until she died and then claimed as his, although he never drove it) and spent many weeks and weekends visiting her grown daughters. She drove to church without him and let him be as late as he wished; he started arriving early for the first time in his life.
After executing her mother's estate, she arranged for her money to be put in a trust. While the farm partnership provided FIL with a retirement beyond his wildest dreams, she kept her mother's money from him so completely that he never saw any of it, although he tried to circumvent the terms of the trust and then complained that he had been hoodwinked and someone had forged his signature on the documents.
I videotaped her in a question-answer session a year before she died. The sisters told me she would only have answered those questions for me, an in-law. What was interesting, was that as she brought up experiences and memories, she completely left out the narrative of how she met her husband and the kind of marriage they had together. Romance with the man I love is central to my life, but not everyone is so lucky. I had to bring her back to this narrative, so she could fill the story in. For her there was no romance, but a recital of facts: a part of her difficult life.
When she died, the last thing she told her husband was a very interesting choice of words: "I love you, and I forgive you." I doubt he knew what that meant, and he has never tried to live up to it.
She got what she wanted, at the last.
She grew up in one of the country's big cities, with a mother who was widowed when she was two years old. Her mother, with ambition before her time, wanted more than to be a secretary at minimum pay, and became a medical researcher for a doctor's office. She never remarried. She traveled the world extensively. She sent her young daughter to stay with her parents in a rural town each summer.
When my MIL was nine years old, a teacher wrote a note to her mother that she was evasive and not very smart. She may have been evasive in self defense, but the teacher missed something major. MIL graduated from high school when she was 16, and from U.C. Berkeley in chemistryf when she was 19. Along the way, she spent a year in a sanatorium after being diagnosed with tuberculosis when she was ten or 11 years old. There are signs that she was most likely abused somewhere along the way.
When she was 19, she met her husband, a Marine paratrooper come home from the war. They had a whirlwind courtship, and she was swept off her feet. He can be charming. They married and he went to college to get an agriculture degree. They began a life that set the standard for the next 30 years: one step ahead of subsistence living. She had two children while he was at college, an older sister and my husband, and then they drove toward what they thought would be a better life farming. They didn't get to the coast like they planned; they stopped somewhere along the way, found the soil was good, that there was water, and land for purchase.
With $3,000 borrowed from her grandparents, they bought their first 40 acres and a basement house. It was a long hard grind from there on. They had a small derelict dairy and could not support themselves with it. FIL and MIL both worked off farm to make ends meet. Her ownership of the checkbook began here; it meant the bills were paid and nothing unnecessary dared show up on an invoice.
She never did get along all that well with her determined and independent minded mother. While it was a relief for her to be married and away, it was a struggle all her married life to keep from depression. After what I have learned, I can understand it. In her papers after her death were copies of a number of articles on dealing with depression. She fought overweight, and finally gave up; it was only in the last year of her life that the cancer that killed her brought her down to her pre-marriage size, and her extra weight probably gave her more time.
Her children remember her differently. It surprised me to discover that the sister most like her mother in many respects got along better with the father. This sister learned at an early age how to handle him by standing up for herself firmly and kindly, and by living a life otherwise above reproach (making him look good). It was a shock when this sister eventually divorced her own husband, who cannot be observed without the label of narcissist being applied as well. It may be that she learned her lessons too well, and attracted a man who tried to live an inauthentic life as a straight husband and father and then finally gave up on it. At least he can be considered more honest than his former FIL.
The other sisters remember their mother as being aloof, overwhelmed, resisting society, lacking in warmth and self-respect, with some quirks and oddities that were amplified by her isolation and poverty. She had no one to turn to but herself, and she kept her own counsel for many years. My husband remembers her as being ineffectual in controlling her children, but someone you could converse with in a way his father could not. In her brilliance, she must have been very lonely with a husband like that. It was only in the later years of her life that she realized she actually was valued by the rural community at large, gained the friendship and admiration of her children, and was beloved of the youngest sister, whom she loved in a way she had earlier been unable to express.
When she brought her mother home to die, after several years of caring for her, MIL inherited a great deal of money. After many years of poverty it took her years to come to terms with spending it. She didn't go crazy and waste it, but in fact lost track of some of it, which we found later in executing her trust. She began to contribute to her grandchildrens' college and missionary funds, and other causes, mostly educational and religious, that were beneficial to those who received them. Very few people ever knew how much money she had.
But her husband did. She purposely kept from him the value of the farm property they held together, so he imagined that only she had money. He tried to wheedle money and property out of her, but the damage was done; their relationship was irrevocably changed. He knew she was no longer dependent on him. She bought a car (which he made fun of until she died and then claimed as his, although he never drove it) and spent many weeks and weekends visiting her grown daughters. She drove to church without him and let him be as late as he wished; he started arriving early for the first time in his life.
After executing her mother's estate, she arranged for her money to be put in a trust. While the farm partnership provided FIL with a retirement beyond his wildest dreams, she kept her mother's money from him so completely that he never saw any of it, although he tried to circumvent the terms of the trust and then complained that he had been hoodwinked and someone had forged his signature on the documents.
I videotaped her in a question-answer session a year before she died. The sisters told me she would only have answered those questions for me, an in-law. What was interesting, was that as she brought up experiences and memories, she completely left out the narrative of how she met her husband and the kind of marriage they had together. Romance with the man I love is central to my life, but not everyone is so lucky. I had to bring her back to this narrative, so she could fill the story in. For her there was no romance, but a recital of facts: a part of her difficult life.
When she died, the last thing she told her husband was a very interesting choice of words: "I love you, and I forgive you." I doubt he knew what that meant, and he has never tried to live up to it.
She got what she wanted, at the last.
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