“Don’t you dare take groceries to your mother!” he barked, shoving aside his half-finished cabbage soup. “Every jar counts, gas is outrageously expensive, and you keep throwing it all into a bottomless pit. Your mother isn’t disabled—let her go to the store herself.”
Olga froze, the ladle still in her hand. In the cramped kitchen of their one-room apartment, where every square centimeter was packed with empty jars for future preserves, his shout echoed especially harshly. She looked down at her hands—red, with dirt ground under her nails that no soap could wash out.
“Oleg, my mother has high blood pressure, she can’t dig up potatoes by herself,” Olga replied quietly. “I only brought her a couple of kilos and a pack of cottage cheese. I bought it with my own money, by the way.”
“Your money is our money!” her husband snapped. “We go to my mother’s dacha every weekend. You don’t crawl around in those garden beds for nothing—you do it so our pantry is full in winter. And you’re wasting resources. So here’s how it is: if you want to take food to your mother-in-law—fine, do it. But then don’t set foot at Valentina Petrovna’s dacha again. You’ll do all the planting yourself, all the weeding yourself, and buy the seedlings yourself.”
Olga slowly set the ladle down on the stand. She remembered how last year Valentina Petrovna had made her set water out in barrels ahead of time so it could warm in the sun instead of burning the delicate cucumber roots with icy well water. She remembered methodically tearing out ground elder and couch grass until her lower back became one solid source of pain.
“All right,” she said calmly. “I understand. No more helping mothers. Not yours, not mine. Since we’re being so economical, let’s economize on everything.”
Oleg nodded in satisfaction, convinced he had won. He did not notice how the familiar spark of fussy забота faded in his wife’s eyes.
The next weekend came. Out of habit, Oleg started packing bags on Friday evening.
“Olya, have you seen the pruning shears? The gooseberry bushes need trimming,” he shouted from the room that served as both their living room and their bedroom.
Olga, sitting calmly in an armchair, flipped through a magazine.
To be continued in the comments.
“Don’t you dare take food to your mother!” he demanded.
I stopped taking groceries, jam, and seedlings to his mother. My mother-in-law’s dacha became overgrown with weeds…
“Don’t you dare take food to your mother!” Oleg barked, pushing away his bowl of unfinished cabbage soup. “Every jar counts, gas is insanely expensive, and you keep throwing all of it into a bottomless pit. Your mother isn’t disabled, let her go to the store herself.”
Olga froze, a ladle still in her hand. In the narrow kitchen of their one-room apartment, where every square centimeter was crammed with empty jars for future preserves, his shout echoed especially loudly. She looked at her hands—red, with dirt ground under her nails that no soap could wash out.
“Oleg, my mother has high blood pressure. She can’t dig up potatoes by herself,” Olga replied quietly. “I only brought her a couple of kilos and a pack of cottage cheese. And I bought it with my own money, by the way.”
“Your money is our money!” her husband snapped. “We go to my mother’s dacha every weekend. You don’t crawl around in those garden beds for nothing—you do it so our pantry is full in winter. And you’re wasting resources. So here’s the deal: if you want to bring food to your mother-in-law—fine, do it. But then don’t set foot at Valentina Petrovna’s dacha again. You’ll plant everything yourself, weed it yourself, buy the seedlings yourself.”
Oleg nodded with satisfaction, convinced he had won. He did not notice how the familiar spark of busy забота went out in his wife’s eyes.
The next weekend came. Out of habit, Oleg started packing bags on Friday evening.
“Olya, have you seen the pruning shears? The gooseberries need trimming,” he shouted from the room that served as both their living room and bedroom.
Olga, sitting calmly in an armchair, flipped through a magazine.
“I don’t know. I’m not going to the dacha.”
“What do you mean? Mom can’t handle it alone. The whole garden is overrun with chickweed after the rains. And it needs watering—it’s scorching hot.”
“Oleg, you set the condition yourself. No help at all. I chose rest. My mother’s garden is overgrown—so be it. Then yours will get overgrown too. Fairness works like that.”
Oleg went alone. He came back on Sunday furious as hell. It turned out that without Olga’s methodical approach, the work went nowhere. Valentina Petrovna spent the whole day just giving orders, and from being unaccustomed to the labor, blisters swelled up on his palms.
July was scorching hot. The remaining seedlings on Olga’s balcony withered away—she never took them to the dacha. The city apartment became suspiciously clean and… empty. There was no pile of vegetables on the floor, no smell of sterilized jars or vinegar for marinade.
“Mom called,” Oleg reported gloomily a couple of weeks later. “She’s crying. Says the tomatoes have started turning black, blight got to them. They should’ve been sprayed, but she doesn’t know with what. Olya, come on, stop being stubborn. Let’s go tomorrow and help her.”
“I’m not being stubborn, Oleg. I’m simply following your order. Weren’t you the one so worried about the budget? Well, enjoy it—we’ve saved so much on gas. And the tomatoes… well, we’ll buy some plastic ones at the store this winter.”
By the end of August, Valentina Petrovna’s dacha had turned into a pitiful sight. Tall nettles and lamb’s quarters rose proudly above the currant bushes, whose berries had gone unpicked that year and simply dropped into the weeds. The mother-in-law, used only to giving orders, discovered that her “instructions” had no effect on weeds.
The climax came on Wednesday, when Oleg’s phone was practically burning from the number of calls. That evening he came home unusually quiet.
“Olya, Mom asked me to tell you…” He hesitated, searching for words. “Basically, she said, ‘Give me Olga back, I’ll be lost without her.’ Even the potatoes are rotting in the ground because no one was there to hill them up. She says she’s ready to take vegetables to your mother herself if only you come back.”
Olga looked at him, raising an eyebrow.
“She’ll take them herself? That’s progress. Fine then, let’s go on Saturday. We’ll see what’s left of your ‘resources.’”
When they arrived at the plot, Valentina Petrovna met them at the gate. She looked completely deflated. The garden looked like a battlefield: fallen stakes, blackened cucumber vines, and weeds as tall as a person.
“Olenka, dear, come in,” her mother-in-law fussed. “I’ve put the samovar on the veranda. We need to talk.”
Olga went into the house, expecting the usual complaints about bad health and requests to immediately grab a hoe. But a surprise was waiting for her on the veranda. Her own mother was sitting at the table, calmly drinking tea from a pretty cup.
Olga froze, looking from one woman to the other.
“Mom? What are you doing here?”
Her mother smiled, taking a bite of homemade marmalade.
“Well, Olya, I dropped by to see Valya. We ran into each other at the clinic the other day and got talking. Turns out we have a lot in common. For example, neither of us likes it when our children start acting like ‘masters of life.’”
Valentina Petrovna sat down beside her and put a hand on her daughter-in-law’s shoulder.
“Olya, forgive Oleg, he’s a fool. He told me you refused to come because you were ‘tired of breaking your back.’ And he told your mother that you were busy at your new job on weekends. We’d still be sitting in our separate corners if not for that chance meeting.”
Oleg, standing in the doorway, began slowly backing away, but under the stern gaze of the two women, he froze.
“So,” the mother-in-law continued, “we’ve had a talk and made a decision. I’ve decided to sell this dacha. I don’t have the strength anymore. And with the money, your mother and I are buying a duplex cottage in the countryside, closer to the city. The garden there will be small—just right for the two of us to handle. A couple of beds for pleasure.”
“And what about us?” Oleg forced out.
“And you, son,” Valentina Petrovna said, looking at him with undisguised sarcasm, “will buy groceries at the store from now on. Since you’re so thrifty and so worried about gas money. Olya and I have already agreed: she’ll come to us to relax, lie in a chaise lounge. And you, if you want berries, will pay according to the price list—just like in a supermarket. With depreciation of our labor included.”
Olga looked at her husband and, for the first time in a long while, laughed. It turned out that the best revenge is not when you throw everything away, but when the people you considered a “resource” unite and strike you out of their accounting altogether.
That Sunday, for the first time in ten years, Olga did not bring home a single jar. Instead, there was only her handbag in the trunk and a bouquet of wildflowers gifted to her by the two most important women in her life.
The following week, Oleg came home with a bag of store-bought potatoes—small, dirty, and half-rotten. Olga looked at the receipt and remarked dryly:
“Quite expensive, Oleg. Maybe you should call your mother? I hear her harvest this year is a sight to behold. Only now the entrance fee is charged. For you—with double rates for harmfulness.”
