in a nutshell so I don't have to drip feed:
I have three children and live about 230 miles away from my Mother. My sisters both live locally to her and see her daily. And even if they see her in the daytime, they phone her every evening at the same time. I'm not as attentive as that. I phone her regularly (a few times a week) but not daily. And obviously I can't visit her daily either as we live over 200 miles away!
She never phones me. She expects her daughters to phone her. So despite the fact that it's the summer holidays and we have three children (the youngest of which is 9 months old) she gets huffy if I go more than 48 hours without phoning her. We go up there regularly, probably about 8-12 weekends a year minimum. And she comes here for the odd week. She doesn't ask or offer to visit. I suggest it, buy her train ticket etc..(she's on a low income)
She's in her late 70's, retired.
So the big issue at the moment is that we haven't left the elder two (9 and 12) there for a week in the summer holidays. My Mum 'wants to get to know my granddaughters properly' and wants us to stay for a week. We used to go up there for a week (usually dh would drop us there one weekend, pick us up the next) but after 48 hours my Mother (assisted by wine) would get increasingly snippy, bad tempered and difficult.
She's quite old school with children, thinks they should be seen and not heard, should fit in with what the parents do. Arranging activities for the children is an alien concept. She doesn't have transport, so would be reliant on my sisters, when they were there, to leave the house and go anywhere. My eldest daughter in particular, now she is 12, wants to hang out with her friends during the holidays. She finds my Mother hard to be around sometimes, and the thought of me leaving her there, without me, is not nice. I wouldn't be confident doing that. (but would love the peace and quiet!)
I've skirted around the issue and said that we'll come up for long weekends as the girls have lots of activities going on here (which is true, and they've already missed a fortnight of those when we went on holiday) and invited her here.
But she keeps going on about it. When I asked her if she'd like to come and visit here for a week or so, because there's more room, and all the girls belongings here, and I'd send her the train ticket etc. she got huffy and said 'but I want you to stay here for a week'. It's a small house, we have to bring our very small friendly dog (who spends far too much time in a crate because my Mother is worried about getting fur etc. on furniture, despite her dog being free range)
I'm sick of the passive aggressive shit. It's exhausting. My sisters are a tough act for me to live up to. I don't see her daily, phone her daily. They can do this because they live around the corner.I phone about three or four times a week. She doesn't phone me. I think I'll always be the disloyal daughter who dared to move away.
I feel a bit disappointed frankly. Mothers arn't supposed to be like this, are they?