girly/cru: Oh, I could dream for hours about the holiday time I'd like to have. It's almost as fun as actually going!! :) Don't worry - I have my eye on a couple of breaks. ;)
lou - oh no! Did your MIL just announce it to you like that?! You have my sympathies- it sounds really similar. The thing I find difficult is that there is an assumption here on their own part that the parents are the easiest people in the world to get one with, which kind of lacks any sort of self-awareness. I can't imagine ever thinking that someone would definitely want to spend a week with me to the point that I wouldn't ask them how they felt about it first! And if they said 'Oh gosh, it would be lovely to see you for a weekend but I can't do a week', I don't think I'd feel hurt - I'd be pleased to get the weekend!
I know that it's meant really, really well, but there is something a little bit weird about it. But I suspect this may be a long-standing quality in the older generation!! I am reading Nicholas Nickleby at the moment, and Mrs Nickleby has it in spades. This is the bit where she and her daughter Kate are nursing Madeline, who is unwell:
'My dear,' Mrs. Nickleby would say, coming into the room with an elaborate caution, calculated to discompose the nerves of an invalid rather more than the entry of a horse-soldier at full gallop; 'how do you find yourself tonight? I hope you are better.'
'Almost well, mama,' Kate would reply, laying down her work, and taking Madeline's hand in hers.
'Kate!' Mrs. Nickleby would say, reprovingly, 'don't talk so loud' (the worthy lady herself talking in a whisper that would have made the blood of the stoutest man run cold in his veins).
Kate would take this reproof very quietly, and Mrs. Nickleby, making every board creak and every thread rustle as she moved stealthily about, would add: 'My son Nicholas has just come home, and I have come, according to custom, my dear, to know, from your own lips, exactly how you are; for he won't take my account, and never will.'
'He is later than usual to-night,' perhaps Madeline would reply. 'Nearly half an hour.'
'Well, I never saw such people in all my life as you are, for time, up here!' Mrs. Nickleby would exclaim in great astonishment; 'I declare I never did! I had not the least idea that Nicholas was after his time, not the smallest. Mr. Nickleby used to say—your poor papa, I am speaking of, Kate my dear—used to say, that appetite was the best clock in the world, but you have no appetite, my dear Miss Bray, I wish you had, and upon my word I really think you ought to take something that would give you one. I am sure I don't know, but I have heard that two or three dozen native lobsters give an appetite, though that comes to the same thing after all, for I suppose you must have an appetite before you can take 'em. If I said lobsters, I meant oysters, but of course it's all the same, though really how you came to know about Nicholas—'
'We happened to be just talking about him, mama; that was it.'
'You never seem to me to be talking about anything else, Kate, and upon my word I am quite surprised at your being so very thoughtless. You can find subjects enough to talk about sometimes, and when you know how important it is to keep up Miss Bray's spirits, and interest her, and all that, it really is quite extraordinary to me what can induce you to keep on prose, prose, prose, din, din, din, everlastingly, upon the same theme. You are a very kind nurse, Kate, and a very good one, and I know you mean very well; but I will say this—that if it wasn't for me, I really don't know what would become of Miss Bray's spirits, and so I tell the doctor every day. He says he wonders how I sustain my own, and I am sure I very often wonder myself how I can contrive to keep up as I do. Of course it's an exertion, but still, when I know how much depends upon me in this house, I am obliged to make it. There's nothing praiseworthy in that, but it's necessary, and I do it.'
With that, Mrs. Nickleby would draw up a chair, and for some three-quarters of an hour run through a great variety of distracting topics in the most distracting manner possible; tearing herself away, at length, on the plea that she must now go and amuse Nicholas while he took his supper. After a preliminary raising of his spirits with the information that she considered the patient decidedly worse, she would further cheer him up by relating how dull, listless, and low-spirited Miss Bray was, because Kate foolishly talked about nothing else but him and family matters."
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