Whenever I want to break my Mom’s heart, here’s how I do it: I go home for the holidays and then book a hotel during my stay. Let the guilt trip begin.
You booked a hottelll? What do you mean you’re not staying with us?
I am one of four children. We are all grown with spouses, children and our own homes. But when we return home, my Mom expects us to stay with her when we visit. Period. No further discussion. It doesn’t matter if there’s twice as many people then there are bedrooms, she’ll make it work. Everyone must be under the same roof.
I encountered this during my first visit home after undergrad. I casually mentioned I was staying at a hotel. She was not having it. “There’s plenty of room. Why would you stay in a hotel?” she asked.
Staying at home means returning to my childhood bedroom. Not a big deal. Sort of nostalgic. It feels the same, except my TigerBeat posters of New Edition and New Kids on the Block have been placed in a box in storage. My room is now part bedroom, part sewing room.
Staying at home also means saving money. The holidays can be pricey enough with gifts and travel, so why wouldn’t I want to save a few bucks by bunking with my mom’s sewing projects?
The real reason I choose separate accommodations is to have my own space to decompress. I love my family and I love spending hours with them. I also enjoy going off to my own space in the evening to recharge. Sometimes, I’ll disappear to read for a while or to watch TV.
The extra cost is worth having a place to retreat.
Apparently, I am not the only one who deals with this dilemma. A girlfriend tells me she’s one of six children. Until recently, she stayed in her parents’ home when she returned to South Carolina a few times a year. Nervously, she made the switch.
The first time she stayed at a hotel, she didn’t mention it to her mother. She simply booked the room and then at the end of the night, when the day’s festivities wrapped up, she told her mother “good night” and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” her Mom asked.
“I’ll be back here in the morning. First thing,” Her mother gave her a look. “I’m here all day, I’m just not sleeping here, Mom.”
The hotel she stays in is walking distance to her parents’ home, but that’s not close enough, she jokes. This Thanksgiving, as she heads to her sister’s place in Boston, she plans to do the same thing. “We have booked a nearby hotel. We need the space and the sanity.”
Another friend says her parents’ home is so tiny that they have to sleep on air mattresses in the basement to accommodate everyone. But that’s what the holidays are all about, she says. “I have tried to tell my mother I wasn’t staying in her house. When I tried to explain, suddenly, I became a five-year-old with pigtails again, asking my mother’s permission. It’s not worth the guilt,” she says.
My L.A. family who comes East every other year has recently started reserving a hotel instead of staying at my Grandmother’s house, which is always overrun with visitors, day and night. They, too, stay at a hotel just a few minutes away, but they spend the entire day at Grandma’s.
In the end, these decisions come down to saving money or saving feelings. The real dilemma is deciding which is the bigger expense in the long run?
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