My aunt, having no decent answer to my mother’s question, went on the offense and started pointing out that the land was hers to do with it whatever she pleased and it was unfair that my mother held onto the deeds.  My mother, although outraged, tried to talk some sense into her sister but my aunt wouldn’t budge.  She kept on pestering and pestering my mother that my father had to put his foot down and told my mom to just give it to her sister.

So she did, and the two sisters didn’t talk again for a long time.  Of course it didn’t take long for my mother to hear from her other sister and from various other people that her youngest sister sold the property for some amount of money.  My mother was extremely saddened by this, because she was the eldest but she wasn’t consulted on any of the issues.  She didn’t know what were the stipulations of the transaction or even who this buyer was.  My aunt and her husband chose that nosy (and opportunist of a) neighbor as their guide.

I was too young to remember any of the tension, but I do remember seeing week after week, my aunt and her family go off to some mall for a shopping splurge.  Things got so bad and my mother got so pained that my father seriously considered selling our house and move away some place south.  Thank goodness someone talked him out of it; we didn’t need the money anyways and property is property.

I supposed my mother threw herself into her work or something, because she got promoted every two years.  Now because of her smarts, she was picked as one of only two people to be sent fully paid to Canada.  They were to stay there for three whole months and study how the Canadian underwriting system worked.  I’ve always seen pictures of my mother bundled up thickly with snow in the background but it never really hit me just how big this move was.

Because of that training, many other insurance companies tried to pirate her so she could be the head of their underwriting departments.  My mother, being innately loyal, had no intension of leaving the company she worked for.  But the company she worked for either didn’t know this or they just didn’t want to take any chances.  They peppered her with salary raises, one hell of a promotion and benefits.  The best benefit she’s received, I think, was the fact that they gave her the option to choose whatever car she wanted and use the next five years to pay off just 25% of the car’s value.  Because of this, we now have a handful of cars in our garage (kept in mint condition by my father, of course). 

The salary increases also helped in buying this house that we live in now, without selling our old house.  I always knew that my mother had the bigger salary than my dad but I just found out last Christmas just how much my mother contributed to our current lifestyle. 

With regards to the story of what happened to my aunt and her husband, that’s for another entry.  Suffice it to say that she and my mom made up eventually and are now on good terms with each other. 

As for my mother, well, she’s still working although very much looking forward to retirement so she can just clean the house, watch her television soaps and play Bejewelled ™ for days on end.

-The End-