I don't like holding money. I think I've mentioned somewhere else... my aim at the end of every pay cycle is to be at $0 balance the night before the next pay is due. We buy good, wholesome and where possible, organic food. We buy the purest water on Earth to drink. We wipe our bums with hypoallergenic toilet paper- containing no chemicals. We buy no nasty cheap alternatives and have almost minimised our exposure to all toxic elements in our home. We balance the cost of this by shopping for most other non-food things in second-hand stores and thrift-shops. What is left after food and other necessities, as well as the odd splurge or impulse are taken care of- I gift away. I want it gone from me.

I don't respect money enough to make it a priority nor fear its lack so much that accumulation of it becomes my life's purpose. Long as basic needs are met and the odd luxury or two... I have no further need of more of it. The way we live now, cruising some days, restricted others, sure it's tenuous but hey... we've become bloody experts at improvising and pulling money out of thin air. Celebrating goes on because of our ingenuity. But only if we need more of it due to an emergency. Else, we continue to cruise.

We've been at both ends, the boys and I: Flush and destitute. Neither has been desirable. Whichever direction they take when they leave me... it will be taken with full consideration of its impact- not just on them, but on everyone around them.

My mothers-in-law... I had the misfortune of them both being... tight. The first? We're talking major case of tight-wadness. Frown after frown after frown at my perceived looseness. "You have to save! Buy a house! Renting is for those without a plan. You have to save to make babies!"

No, I don't. I am in the middle of the CBD, I have an apartment with a rooftop pool and BBQ and a sauna and some damn good parties; I can walk around the corner to Chinatown or up the street to the Italian district for some pasta. I can go clubbing by foot. In fact, I can walk anywhere and my business is a block away. I also don't want babies anytime soon. I am right where I need to be. This is my plan! Give it up to buy a house in the burbs like you? And do the daily hour-long commute and have my share of little 'uns... so you can brag about it? Meanwhile, you tell me because I wasn't born under the right flag colours and because I am not a dutiful daughter to you I am "not going to get this piece of jewellery or this antique or that painting when my son moves out and definitely no financial aid ever so don't ask!"... Honey, you had an only son late in a very successful life and I married him and you loved him more than I did. I could have had a couple of kids, waited you out and then taken the lot. That's the problem: You didn't think ahead. I spared you that fuck-up (and quite possibly your last bitter thought being of me) by leaving him.

The second one- she put the boys and me off generic brands for life. Everything in her pantry including the toilet paper she bought in bulk had the same bland, black on yellow packaging. No pictures. A kilo of sugar or a kilo of flour- you had to read the bloody package to know which one to pick up. And doing her weekly tour of the 'Not Quite Right' store for bargain food items- they were going into my children's stomachs after the recommended use-by date! They were not quite right duh! And stacking the pantry full of reduced-price generic toilet paper- what did she know we didn't? A sudden shortage of the product worldwide looming ahead? A toilet paper war? Toilet paper as currency? We often made up stories, the boys and I.

Her car died. Literally- she'd had it for 22 years. Whenever my kids got in it, I prayed. They sat upright; frightened by all the noises and the bits of rust she left in her wake. The forty-year-old refrigerator was still going last time I opened it a couple of years ago- and then had to manoeuvre the long handle shut a particular way to stop the door from staying ajar and leaking. She's not changed her couch since the 60's (I did the exercise of looking up its current value and was shocked. It has now become an investment piece.) Her microwave... remember the old, old types? She has one. They cost fifty bucks here nowadays; they long stopped being a luxury item. We were afraid to go near it. (We plonked whatever inside, then pressed the button and ducked around the fridge.) It sometimes hissed. The door didn't shut properly. (But it still worked, according to her, so why throw it away?) Her dining table was replaced- only because I updated mine and I gave her my old one so we no longer had to sit on loose springs. (They leave marks on your butt-cheeks, discomfort aside.) 

I saw her bank account one day by accident- she asked me to check the balance at the bank after I'd helped her with some shopping. (She'd forgotten her reading glasses and didn't trust that the teller had entered the right deposit amount and didn't want to leave the bank till she made sure.) I kept the shock under control but the woman was... very flush. (I had NO idea people could keep near-seven figures in an ordinary passbook!) So flush in fact- she could live in a house that's not immediately across from the railway tracks (and you sleep only after the last train has passed and wake with the first train because everything rattles and you fear the whole thing will come down on your head) and the massive mobile phone tower built directly opposite under which my boys slept when they visited for a weekend. So flush she could afford to pamper our asses at least, not grate them. So flush she could afford oodles of wholesome noodles for her grandsons; not the 50c twin-pack of 'chicken flavoured' ones she served them from the microwave and which they dutifully ate... and hated.

I studied her a lot. Frugal. Conservative. Tightwad. Tight-hearted. So much, she told the boys off one day because "You're using too much toilet paper! Four pieces are enough." Like the endless supply she maintained was ever going to end? Like there's a right amount of toilet paper one should use and they should count it every time to make sure they don't exceed it? Little boys - and bigger boys - like toilet paper. What's not to like about it; unless it's so cheap it grates your bum and you need more of it because it's bloody single layered?

She frowned at me a lot. "Another holiday?" She's not been anywhere further than a few kilometres from her house for 40 years. She's not taken a holiday here or abroad, a weekend away or even a day-trip. The boys have only ever known the routine of her house and her odd painful visit to ours- they've not known her in any other environment- including the park around the corner from her place. When we moved to the coast, half an hour from her and serviced by a freeway almost entirely- she visited once, driven there by her daughter. Bitched about the distance, the petrol, the time it took and... the distance, the petrol, the time it took- you get the idea, even though it had personally cost her zip. Once was enough for all of us.

I understand the adage: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And sure, you came from a village, you were bought up in poverty and you... did without. Why are you bloody still doing without, is my question. You have a few years left now. Can't take a bank balance with you. Nor your now-worthless house because you refused to sell-up when the tower was announced like all the neighbours did; nor your properties overseas and the bank accounts with accumulated rents and the thing called compound interest you haven't touched in decades there. What use to anyone, those huge piles of money parked in the banks- if they sit parked there till you croak it? Your children are of near-pension age now. And it wasn't easy, being them, let me tell you.

Yet- when your youngest grandson needed dental plates to correct his overbite and the cost was near 7k... you gave him a hundred bucks and said "That's all I can afford Markie. Your grandma is a pensioner you know." You lied to my kid and you made him feel guilty for taking that hundred bucks off you! You lied often to my kids. You made them believe you were almost destitute and that they should feel sorry for you. And I had to play along; you made me complicit in your holding your love to ransom. So they ate the damn chemically 'flavoured' noodles and watched your bulky, 20yo, flickering, dying TV with no cable channels and ate your bland generic tri-coloured ice cream whose primary ingredient was sugar and they wore the terrible matching $20 top and bottom sets from KMart you bought them Christmas and birthdays for many painful years- to please you. Kids get hungry. Kids get bored. Kids love their grandparents.

I know real poverty and destitution, I've been there. I know homelessness. As do my kids. So I told them; I let her secret out recently. This because Dylan found his cast and remembered the injury to his right middle finger after a bowling accident, and how he'd needed reconstruction and plastic surgery. (The public hospital doctor who'd first examined him had pulled me aside and said: "If you can, I suggest you go Private. There's damage to the growth plates and the surgeons we have on staff here don't specialise in such intricate work. We can't guarantee a good result.")

You hear this, and the fact that if not successful, your child may end up with a middle finger shorter than the rest... you go Private. You budget and you cut everything but bare necessities and you put off paying bills... you even lose your job as a consequence.

I had told him of my decision to go Private despite the cost, at the time- when he questioned why we were changing hospitals. "That's a lot of money mum!" He'd exclaimed. "Maybe grandma will help you if you ask her?"

"It's okay hon, you let me worry about it."

You don't get any help from her but you hide this from your child because grandparents are important:

"I'm sorry; I only have enough to get me by till next pension. I wish I'd known sooner."

"But this is an emergency! It's your grandson!" (And I know what's in your bank!)

"I'm sorry, I wish I could help."

Yep... But you grin for weeks afterwards, despite the angst and the doing without to pay for it because your son has a fancy Private Hospital plastic moulded cast and his middle finger extends healthily (and successfully) upwards. You visit her often till the cast is off; his extended middle finger portraying your feelings eloquently.

"I don't want her money," Dylan said afterwards.

"I don't either," Marcus said.

I guess they both thought back and... everything about her became tainted.

"Boys... chances are you won't see much if any of it. You've not been to visit her for two years. You know what she's like with grudges."

"Good," Marcus said.

"Good," Dylan added.

Why did I do that? Expose her? Because sometimes, being tight with money equates to being tight overall. Mean-spirited. Spiteful. Pessimistic as all-fuck. Miserable. I wanted them to see what a mean, miserable life looks like. And to understand that there's nobility to true poverty- but there's oft devilishness to contrived poverty or tight-wadness. This, in case they ever saw any of their inheritance and... marvelled at where it had come from. Some of it had come from them and their sacrifices; the money they'd made her by counting toilet paper pieces and eating hated 50c noodles and not... gouging the profits by accessing it for their health and well-being- even when destitute... when it would have really mattered.

I too will be a grandparent one day if life blesses me with both time and opportunity. As will my children, as will you.

Now? I am spending most of what could have been my boys' inheritance every day, in the now- giving them the very best and also trading it for shared experiences; using it as, and how they need it. Life Insurance will provide a decent sum for my disposal and a first-class holiday somewhere exotic for them and/or their families... or some other earthly indulgence. They know what not to do with it.

(By no means is this writing representative of in-laws/grandparents as a whole. I have known more than my share of other, kind-hearted, open-hearted ones. I just struck out with mine. And I WAS to blame for my choice of partner in both instances.)