House guests

After my sister got married, she moved overseas with her husband. With the prospect of free lodging in an exotic land, my mother announced that she and my father would soon visit. For three weeks. 

My new brother-in-law went pale. In the end, my parents stayed for two weeks. And my mother has been the subject of significant ribbing ever since.

Now my parents generally keep their visits to a polite three days. Not that my mother wouldn’t stay longer if she could. My father knows that fish and guests stink after three days ... except when the purchase of plane tickets is involved.

My mother would live with us if we hinted at an invitation. She refers to our guest room as “her” room and seems deeply offended if we tell her that she can’t visit, as if we’ve put her out in the street without a warm coat.

This happened last fall. We were renovating our master bedroom and moved — for six months — into “her” room. She called to announce an impending visit (there is no asking, just announcing), and I told her that there was no vacancy — that we were living in the guest room.

There was a pause, as if she were waiting for me to say, “Oh never mind, you can come. Andy and I will sleep on the futon in the office.”

But horrible daughter that I am, I did not capitulate. They stayed at the local Comfort Inn. I felt guilty. Andy did not.

But there have been other times when saying “I’m afraid that’s an inconvenient time to come,” or simply “No,” hasn’t stopped her. Three years ago, she and my father made plans to fly to England from an airport near our house, not theirs. Yet they failed to advise us of their plans. A friend from Colorado had plans to visit us at the exact time.

Put off by their presumption that mi casa es su casa, I firmly said no, that I would not ask my friend to sleep on the couch (or futon) so they could roost here. I thought that was that. My friend arrived, and when we returned from a day trip, there was my mother sitting at our kitchen table.

“We were too tired to drive home,” she said in a wet-puppy voice.

Andy was outraged. I was mad. My friend felt awkward. I asked them to sleep on the futon, then felt guilty all night.

It’s not that I don’t love my parents. I do. Very much. And I know the sacrifices they made when my sister and I were young — eating fried clams at HoJo’s rather than at a nicer place with table cloths, driving us through freezing rain to reach the orthodontist, listening to us whine and complain through the drudgery of prep school, and fetching our tired selves from college, not to mention paying for it.

It’s just that their visits make me feel as if I’m being drawn and quartered. My parents like to think that they just blend into our lives when they visit. But in truth, it only works best when we — or specifically I — become part of theirs again. I feel torn between my former role as child under their care and my current role as adult with a child now under my care — a child who wants my attention as much as they want it too.

“She certainly runs the house, doesn’t she?” my mother will say in the middle of one of Samantha’s “Grandma-is-visiting” meltdowns.

“She does live here,” I say in Samantha’s defense. I want to have a meltdown too.

Then there’s the fact that we lead a different lifestyle than my parents did when they were in the trenches of raising children. I choose to work, and to exercise, as often as I can. My parents firmly believe that dinner should involve silverware and be on the table at 6 p.m. or shortly thereafter. And they don’t always agree with where I cut corners. My father once announced that he doesn’t consider pizza an adequate dinner entrée.

“What are you planning for dinner tonight?” my mother always asks between bites of cereal. When she was raising children, she always had a dinner plan, and she seems to feel that starvation is imminent if something isn't defrosting by mid-morning, or a grocery list isn't prepared. I usually regard dinner as something that can be pulled together in the 20 minutes before the appointed hour, and sometimes it involves the same cereal she was munching on for breakfast. But I have to say, she has never gone hungry in my home.

When either Andy or I dash off in the evening for a bike ride or game of tennis, my mother gets a worried look and asks, “When will you eat?

“When we get back.”

“It’s not good for you to eat so late,” she replies, still worried.

“It’s not good for me to not exercise,” I insist.

Then there are the comments about parenting style. “You act like you’re running a restaurant,” she chastises when I ask Samantha what she would like for dinner, macaroni and cheese or cous cous and chicken. “Just make her eat what you’re eating.”

Except I don’t know many 6-year-olds who eat take-out Thai food or spinach lasagna. And I refuse to subsist on mac & cheese.

In the hope that she might broaden her view, I point out to my mother that Andy, Samantha and I are reasonably happy and well-nourished. That Andy and I make a decent living and aren’t on the gov’ment dole. That we help the neighbors and the community when we can. And that Samantha doesn’t swing from the chandeliers, play loud violent video games, or yell obscenities out the window.

But perhaps if she did, my parents wouldn’t visit as often.