More about my mother

[fbhjr]

I’m still thinking about those 2 $20 check my mother sent us for our 20th wedding anniversary.
It is just so strange to me that it keeps running through my head.

10 years ago she sent us nothing for our anniversary. That year, two months before our anniversary, she sent me this in an email:

“You'll have a busy fall this year. Ten years married and the big 4-0. Imagine you are busy on plans already.
Would like to give you what I gave you for a wedding present but funds are short. Good luck and good time.”

When we got married, she and my father gave us $3000. Which was $3000 more than I ever expected from them. OK, the cynical part of me says “you had just finished paying them $28,000 for college, so they had the cash then.” But, I was still very surprised they parted with any of it for us.
Of course my mother criticized us for spending the money to pay off my wife’s student loans. Apparently she had expected us to use the money as the down payment for a new car. (The car I had at the time was less than a year old, so this confused me.)

This is why I’m confused.
At 10 years we get “I want to give you $3000, but I’m going to give you nothing.”
At 20 years we get 2 $20 checks.

Have we devalued $2960? Or were her funds so low 10 years ago that 2 $10 checks would have put her over the limit. (The rest of that email from 10 years ago talks about her impending vacation with her friend. So, I’m not at all sure $20 was that big a stretch.)

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want her money. I won’t take her bribes. And, whatever excuse she gives for giving money, birthday, anniversary, etc, she thinks of it as a bribe and expects something back.
I’d have torn up 2 $10 checks in 2003 just as I did 2 $20 last night.
I’d have torn up a $3000 one even faster.

I’m just confused by the intent.

I know, I know. As I say to my wife: “You have to stop thinking you’re in a chess game with these people when they are clearly playing whack-a-mole.”
But, it does seem very strange.

Comments

[m-danson.livejournal.com]

Cashing either check will tell her she got to one of you.
Which check is cashed will tell her which one.
Twenty dollars is the lowest denomination that is not pocket change by most gift standards.
They are trying to get you to stick your head up.

Just move on.