My Husband Hates Fish'n'Chips

Yet again, my husband took his mother out for fish and chips. She wants so little and we are all beginning to loathe what little we have to do. I can handle the medical aspects to the matriarch's life and her more prosaic needs but it is so hard to have to invite her to do things, anything, all the time. She is an old woman but she seems to want nothing until I ask her...and then she wants whatever I have to offer. My husband suggests I offer her nothing. But, then, she just sits up in her room and I feel guilty. So, we do the drives and the lunches and the blood clinics and the shopping; I do get her out a lot. I do try. But, as my husband says, it is not her fault she is not the kind of grandmother I would have dreamed of. Other people cannot live up to my definitions and I shouldn't expect it.

How do old people change? Or do they just become more defined images of themselves--like a person with sharper edges, a clearer picture of what they have always been? What will I be like when I am old? The matriarch just expects me to cater to her; I just know what she wants and can fulfill her desires. Will I expect the same of my child? How can I prevent it? I still refuse to believe all old people somehow evolve this way and become desirous of always being the centre of attention; I tend to think people, like the matriarch, who are selfish have always wanted to be the centre of attention. She was the baby of her family and maybe was the centre of her family's eye; I don't know. I make up reasons for her selfishness.

Tomorrow, we go to my child's piano recital and, then, the hair salon.