They Changed The Locks On My Own House. My Daughter-In-Law Looked At Me And Said: “It’s Ours Now.” She Expected Me To Cry. Instead, I Smiled, Pulled Out My Phone, And Prepared To SET THINGS STRAIGHT.

“Emily, this is my furniture, my house, my living room. How could you change everything without consulting me?”

“Oh, Martha, don’t be so dramatic,” she replied with a smile that was no longer sweet at all. “The furniture was ancient.

It looked bad. This is much more modern, more functional. Robert is thrilled with the change.”

When my son came home from work that night, I expected him to say something—to realize what had happened.

But instead, he sat on the new sofa and sighed with relief. “This is so comfortable, honey.”

“Excellent choice.”

“Robert,” I said, pointing to my furniture piled in the corner. “What’s going to happen to my things?”

“Mom, that furniture was already so worn out.

We can donate it. I’m sure someone needs it more than we do.”

Donate it. He wanted to donate the furniture I had bought with my labor in my house without even asking me.

That night, I cried in silence as I listened to them laugh in their new living room celebrating their successful renovation. But that was just the beginning. The following week, Emily invited her friends over without telling me.

I came home from the market to find five strange women in my kitchen using my dishes, drinking coffee from my cups, talking about me as if I wasn’t there. “This is the mother-in-law,” Emily told them when she saw me enter, “the one I told you about, who has very old-fashioned ideas about decorating.”

Her friends looked at me with that condescending gaze we reserve for older people we consider obsolete. “Oh, yes,” said one of them.

“My mother-in-law is the same way. They cling to their old things and don’t understand that times change.”

Continue reading…