For the sake of a child, any mother is ready for anything. But if it suddenly occurs to her to take into account her own interests, this can be regarded as almost a betrayal.
Inna looked at her watch and took a deep breath. The hands moved inexorably towards midnight, counting the last minutes of the day. Her birthday. Inna really hoped that for her daughter this would be a reason to call her or at least write a congratulatory text message. Alas, the hopes were in vain.
The discord with my daughter lasted for almost a year. The notorious housing issue became the reason. Lena suddenly expressed a desire to live separately. Inna did not mind: her daughter is an adult, she graduated from the institute, she supports herself and does not need maternal control. However, as it turned out, Lena was not going to fork out for rent.
“Isn’t it too fat for you to live alone in a three-room apartment? – the daughter asked without unnecessary politeses. – From this three-ruble note, two odnushki in a residential area will turn out, I already recognized. So go ahead and sell and we’ll leave. ”
Inna was taken aback by these words. It is normal to live separately from an adult daughter, but changing the apartment that she inherited from her parents is a completely different matter. Inna’s whole life was connected with this small cozy three-ruble note in the city center. She was brought here from the hospital, from here she went to school, then to college, ran on dates, went to work. And here she raised her daughter. She gave birth to Lena late, on the threshold of her fortieth birthday, when she realized that plans to start a family in the foreseeable future were not destined to come true, and the end of reproductive age was not far off. She gave birth, as they say, for herself. Parents supported her in this decision and actively helped in raising the child.
While mom and dad were alive, Inna was not too worried about her failed female happiness, because she felt a sea of love and care on their part.
The main thing is that she has a daughter with whom they will be as friendly all their lives as she is with her parents.
Her father and mother left one by one when her daughter graduated from college. In the absence of her parents, the apartment seemed to Inna unexpectedly large, and, coming home from work, she could not find a place for herself. Once I shared this thought with Lena – and in response I heard the very words about the exchange of the family nest: it turns out that the daughter had already thought of everything and decided for herself.
To be honest, Inna was not ready for such a formulation of the question, because she had never thought about it. Rather, at the dawn of her youth, during the period of the first whirlwind romance, she was going to move out from her parents, but not to exchange an apartment, but to rent some affordable housing. She reasoned simply: the apartment was not earned by me, which means that it was not for me to dispose of it. The romance ended before these plans were destined to come true. Then Inna wanted to live separately in order to prove her independence to her parents, but then her mother fell seriously ill, and for the sake of caring for her, these thoughts also had to be pushed aside. Well, when Lena was born, she didn’t want to leave anywhere: she, a single mother, could not do without parental help in caring for the baby.
And when the grown-up daughter unexpectedly demanded her share of the apartment, Inna realized that the move would greatly affect her quality of life, and not for the better. She, an elderly woman with a heap of sores, will have to commute to work from the outskirts of the city, wasting time and health in endless traffic jams, and now it is only 15 minutes to the office at a leisurely pace. Two best friends, just like her, single women, also live nearby. And I really didn’t want to leave this apartment, where her whole life had passed and to which she had literally become attached to her soul.
“Let’s not sell it, okay? – she suggested to her daughter after much deliberation. – I will soon be 60, and at this age it is not easy for a single woman to change her place of residence: in fact, this means the loss of both work and the usual circle of friends. You can stay here too, right? I don’t climb into your life, I don’t torture you with control. But when you have a family, my help will not be superfluous. Besides, one day this apartment will still be yours. But, if you so want to live separately, I can help you rent a house.
For example, I will give you my salary and live on a pension. “
Lena, having listened to her mother, grimaced and rapped out:
“Well, everything is clear: your own well-being is dearer to you than mine. You will live alone in a large apartment, and you offer me to rent a birdhouse – great! Okay, mother, I’ll leave, but believe me: I will never forget and forgive you this. And do not count on me in old age: you refused to give me your own place to live, and I do not intend to serve you a glass of water. “
Further conversations and persuasions were pointless: the daughter did not want to listen to anything. A few days after that conversation, she left for a rented apartment, leaving neither an address nor a new phone number. She cut off all contact with her mother. She knows about what is happening in her daughter’s life only from her page on the social network. Inna sometimes leaves messages there – they remain unanswered. That is why the woman was so looking forward to her birthday: for some reason it seemed to her that on this day her daughter would definitely appear. It didn’t appear.
… Sitting in the corner of the sofa with tucked legs, Inna looked around the living room with a melancholy glance. On the table were uncleaned dishes: she celebrated her birthday with her bosom friends. They, of course, noticed that the birthday girl could not find a place for herself and constantly glanced at the phone. The holiday did not go well, the friends decided not to stay too long, but she did not hold them back. From time to time replaying the last conversation with her daughter in her head, Inna smiled bitterly: she kept her apartment, but destroyed her life. But not at the moment when she refused to exchange, but much earlier, when she did not teach her only child to take into account not only her own interests.