The morning after the christening, I opened my banking app before I even put the kettle on. Three recurring transfers to Lyudmila Pavlovna were still active there: 8,760, 6,240, and 4,580 rubles. For the past year and a half, I had always made sure there was enough money in my account on the required dates.
That morning, for the first time, I decided there didn’t need to be anymore.
And I didn’t make that decision because of the loans themselves.
Mom Arrived with a Blanket and an Envelope
Dima had just turned six months old, and we decided to celebrate his christening without throwing a huge party. After the ceremony, we reserved a table at a small café. We invited our parents, the godparents, my sister and her husband, and a few of Andrey’s relatives.
My mother arrived first. She brought a blanket she had knitted herself, with a green border, and an envelope containing five thousand rubles. A few days earlier, she had even warned me that she couldn’t afford to give us more at the moment.
“Please don’t be upset, Oksana. I know how expensive everything for babies is these days.”
 
“Mom, stop. Why would I be upset?”
She was retired and occasionally took small clothing alteration jobs to earn a little extra money. I knew perfectly well how much she had left after paying utilities and buying everyday necessities, so I never expected expensive gifts from her.
Lyudmila Pavlovna arrived later. She brought a large shopping bag from a children’s store, placed it beside her chair, and during lunch managed to mention several times that she and Andrey’s father had spent a long time choosing the gift and had bought “something good that would last more than a month.”
At first, I ignored it. My mother-in-law had always been like that. Whenever she bought something, everyone around her had to know exactly what she had purchased, how long she had spent choosing it, and why her choice was better than everyone else’s.
Eventually, the conversation turned to the gifts.
“Nina Arkadyevna, what did you give your grandson?” Lyudmila Pavlovna asked.
Mom pointed to the blanket lying on the empty chair next to her.
“I knitted this. And I put a little money in an envelope for the kids. They can decide themselves what Dimochka needs most.”
My mother-in-law picked up the edge of the blanket with two fingers, studied the knitting, and said,
“Well, handmade things can be useful too.”
 
The moment I heard her tone, I knew it would be better if the subject ended there.
It didn’t.
She Said It Completely Calmly at the Table
A few minutes later, Andrey’s sister asked what people usually gave for christenings these days. Lyudmila Pavlovna immediately started describing her own gift and then, for some reason, brought up my mother’s envelope.
“Nina Arkadyevna is a very economical person,” she said.
Mom didn’t respond. She was cutting a piece of pie on her plate and didn’t even look up.
I asked,
“Lyudmila Pavlovna, why are you saying that?”
“No reason. I’m just saying.”
Dima’s godmother tried to steer the conversation toward the photographs, but my mother-in-law turned toward her sister and added loudly enough for everyone to hear,
 
“What can you expect from her? She’s practically penniless. At least she made the blanket.”
The conversation stopped instantly.
Andrey placed his cup on its saucer and said quietly,
“Mom, why would you say something like that?”
“What?” Lyudmila Pavlovna shrugged. “We’re all adults here. I didn’t say anything terrible.”
My mother stayed for another ten minutes or so. Then she took out her phone and told me she was going to call a taxi.
I followed her into the hallway. While she was putting on her coat, I asked her several times to stay, but she only shook her head.
“Don’t, Oksana. It’s your celebration. I’d rather go home.”
“Are you leaving because of her?”
“I just want to go home.”
She buttoned her coat, adjusted her scarf, and left.
For the rest of the evening, she kept sending me photos of Dima that she had taken at the café, pretending as though nothing had happened.
Lyudmila Pavlovna stayed until the very end.
Three Months of Help Turned into a Year and a Half
Andrey and I talked about it after we got home and Dima had fallen asleep.
I asked my husband why his mother had been allowed to sit with us for another two hours after what she had said.
“What was I supposed to do, Oksana? Drag her out of the café by the arm? I told her she shouldn’t have said it.”
“She didn’t accidentally let something slip. She knew exactly what she was saying.”
Andrey was silent for a moment. Then he asked me not to turn one comment into a huge family scandal. In his opinion, his mother could apologize later, and ruining relationships right there at the christening would have made everything even worse.
That was when I remembered the three automatic transfers.
A year and a half earlier, Lyudmila Pavlovna had been left with three loans at the same time. There was nothing unusual about them. One had been taken out for household appliances, another was older, and the third was relatively small.
Together, her monthly payments came to 19,580 rubles.
At some point, she started struggling to cover all her expenses, and Andrey suggested that we help her for a few months.
“Let’s help her until summer,” he said. “By then she’ll sort things out.”
I agreed.
My salary was paid on the fifth of every month, while Lyudmila Pavlovna’s loan payments were due later, so for convenience we set up three automatic transfers from my bank account to hers. The money arrived in advance, and she then used it to make her own loan payments.
It was supposed to last three months.
 
Six months passed. Then a year.
Every time I asked Andrey whether it was time to stop helping, he said his mother was still having a difficult time and that we just needed to be patient a little longer.
By the end of eighteen months, 352,440 rubles had been transferred from my account to hers.
Of course, as far as the bank was concerned, none of this mattered. The loans were in Lyudmila Pavlovna’s name. I wasn’t a guarantor and had no legal obligations under any of her contracts.
We were simply giving her money voluntarily.
After the christening, my willingness to keep doing that disappeared.
The Next Morning, I Canceled All Three Transfers
Andrey was still asleep when I opened the recurring payments section in my banking app. The next transfer was scheduled to go through in a few days.
I canceled the first one.
Then the second.
Then the third.
I didn’t message my mother-in-law, and I didn’t tell my husband immediately either. I simply removed the automatic payments I had personally set up long ago.
That evening, Andrey remembered that one of his mother’s payment dates was approaching.
“Mom has a loan payment this week. Everything will go through normally, right?”
 
“No. I canceled the transfers.”
For a second, he didn’t understand.
“All of them?”
“All three.”
“Oksana, are you serious? We agreed to help her.”
I reminded him that what we had actually agreed on was helping her until summer. Since that conversation, another summer had already come and gone, along with half of the following year.
Andrey sat down at the kitchen table.
“Fine. But why now? It’s obvious why.”
“Of course it is.”
“You’re doing this because of what Mom said yesterday.”
“Yesterday simply made me realize that I don’t understand why I should keep giving almost twenty thousand rubles every month to someone who considers my mother a pauper.”
Andrey said his mother couldn’t afford the full amount on her own and that she would definitely start calling him.
For some reason, that seemed to bother him more than anything else.
I didn’t argue.
I simply said that the loans were not in our names and that Lyudmila Pavlovna would now have to decide for herself how to manage her own money.
Four days later, she called me at around ten in the morning.
“Oksana, I didn’t receive the transfer from you today. Is there a problem with the bank?”
“The bank is fine. I canceled the recurring transfers.”
 
After a brief silence, she asked,
“Couldn’t you have warned me?”
“I could have. But you didn’t warn my mother either before deciding to discuss her finances in front of the entire table.”
Lyudmila Pavlovna went silent.
“So this is revenge?”
“No. It just means you’re responsible for paying your own loans again.”
She began telling me that Andrey and I had promised to help her and that she had been counting on that money.
I reminded her that the original arrangement had been for three months.
After that, my mother-in-law said she would discuss everything with her son and ended the call.
And she did.
That evening, Andrey suggested that we at least keep one of the transfers active.
I refused.
 
Lyudmila Pavlovna made the first payment herself. She managed the second one too.
Later, Andrey told me that there wasn’t much left to pay on the smallest loan, so his sister lent their mother the remaining amount. After that, Lyudmila Pavlovna started gradually repaying the money to her daughter instead.
My mother and my mother-in-law met several more times at family gatherings after that christening.
Now Lyudmila Pavlovna always greets her with exaggerated politeness and never brings up money.
And I never turned those three recurring transfers back on.
