agonyaunt | Dear Abby: Visiting Grandma

Dear Abby: Visiting Grandma

DEAR ABBY: We visit my grandmother out of state once a year. After our visits, I usually leave feeling defeated. A few reasons why:

She leaves multiple notes around "reminding" us to clean up after ourselves. There's a note in the shower that says, "Please wipe down shower walls after use." She asks me to change the sheets or launder our towels before I leave. Although she has decorative paper hand towels in the bathrooms, she asks us not to use them because they are "too expensive." She complains about my son's handprints on her windows (he's 2). She badmouths nearly everyone she knows, has unsolicited advice on everything and is generally highly judgmental.

When we return home, she gushes about our visit for months, saying how "lonely" she is now that we're gone and how much she enjoyed our visit. I don't understand. Is this normal grandmother behavior, or does she take it too far? Must we continue spending big bucks to go out there every year, or can we just send pictures and call often? -- GRANDDAUGHTER IN A QUANDARY

DEAR GRANDDAUGHTER: If these annual visits are a "command performance," I can see why you might resent them. However, it's not unheard of for a hostess to leave a note asking that the shower be wiped down, or that the sheets and towels be laundered before a guest leaves -- particularly if the guests are family members. A gracious guest wouldn't mind doing those things, and would ask how her hostess wanted it handled before she left.

Rather than stew when she complained about your 2-year-old's handprints on her windows, the appropriate response would have been: "You know, you're right. I'll get the Windex!" And when she made a negative comment about someone, you should have found something nice to say about the person in response.

If these visits cause financial hardship, visit your grandmother every OTHER year, or consider inviting her to visit you, but don't cut her off completely. After all, she's family, and not all family members are "perfect."

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This is one where I'm just curious to see others' reactions. And I mean that genuinely: I'm sort of at, "Hmmn." ;)

It's one of those ones where I'm very much like . . . insufficient data, cannot opine?

How old is Gramma? What known ailments or mental/emotional/cognitive shit does Gramma have? What are the other circumstances of Gramma's life? How has Gramma treated people in general through her life? Etc? What is her living situation? What is her physical ability level? What counts as "badmouthing" and being "highly judgemental"?

Because for me depending on the answers to those details, the real-world situation the LW describes could genuinely run from "Gramma's massive emotional abuse bullshit" to "LW get the stick out of your ass, grow some patience and be a damn grownup", to everything in between? Honestly and truly.

Like. If we were to take someone with the physical ability of my grandmothers, all the cleaning requests are ABSOLUTELY reasonable, to the point of if we're talking my paternal gramma I am severely side-eyeing the granddaughter for needing to be asked. They both use walkers; maternal grandmother is on oxygen for anything other than walking across a room, and is 4'11". (If anything thinking about this is making me wince slightly for not having done MORE to clean up after myself last time I visited, and making a mental note about that for future - it slipped thru the cracks because I was barely functioning for own overload reasons, and she's in a seniors building so she has a housekeeper so it's not TOO bad, but still).

My paternal grandmother can barely bend over or, once bent over, can't properly straighten up. Visiting them in their own homes and using their facilities and NOT, eg, stripping the beds or cleaning little fingerprints off the windows down at 2yo height is, basically, being an asshole. Both grammas are also kind of gossipy in the way that I have observed is culturally common in women their age (late 80s) because that was just HOW YOU SOCIALIZED all the way thru their lives in their gender-class-etc intersection, and some of that gossip is judgemental and could be read as "badmouthing" depending on the listener's tolerances, and they often have Advice.

But like . . . they're also late 80-somethings, in pain a lot, have crappy mobility and although in both cases because we work quite hard to arrange that their social vistas are not super limited, they're still limited in the way that physical and mental fragility and disability can make a life limited, and these are habits of over eighty years in the making and at that point it behooves me to have as much patience as I can and to find ways to talk to them about other stuff. Because these were also women who bent over backwards to do stuff for me when I was little and support my parents in doing stuff for me and would still do so if they had the option.

I mean the wiping the showers seems weird to me as a cleaning thing, but whatever: I know my fastidiousness about NO I CANNOT USE THAT TOWEL IT WAS USED BY SOMEONE ELSE seems weird to other people. And I suppose if you have really hard water, that's one way to avoid buildup.

ON THE OTHER HAND, I know people my age who have grandparents who are still very physically and mentally able, and who have also been ASSHOLES their entire lives and outright emotionally manipulative, demand that their families expend huge amounts of money to go visit them when it's hugely inconvenient (and grandparents could go visit GRANDKIDS - on grandkids' dime, even! - with less expense and disruption but refuse to do so) and then act like it's a huge Imposition, and so on. And whose "badmouthing" is outright abusive, whose advice is controlling in the extreme, aaand on and on and on.

And like I could see this letter coming either from a smack-worthy thoughtless cousin of mine (I don't have one, but I know people like what I'm thinking of and could readily imagine them as my cousins, and they'd write that kind of thing about my grandparents), OR from a grandkid of one of the latter who doesn't quite know how to communicate what's actually wrong with how their grandparent behaves?

So that's my take.

And obviously there's also like everything in between and the related adjustments in response appropriate to where, in between, one is sitting. And matters like what "big bucks" are to the LW, and in what kind of situation they are to spend them on these trips, and how the trips affect the kids, and on and on and on? And also what the social and family consequences of not going are going to be.

I don't really like Abby's response because it leaves no room for my scenario number two, and also because I don't consider laundering and REMAKING the bed a reasonable host request. (Stripping the sheets and putting them in the laundry machine, sure, although I wouldn't actually do that to a Guest*, but I wouldn't feel weird if someone asked me to. Running the whole load and then remaking the bed . . . .not so much.) And if there ISN'T a mobility problem involved then yeah, okay no gramma, if you invite a two year old to your space you're going to get fingerprints, suck it up and deal.

And moreover I don't necessarily think "she's family and they're not all perfect" is the be all and end all - I do think that family is a particular situation wherein the realities of boundaries and so on can be quite different from other places and situations? But I don't think it's a get-out-of-consequences-for-assholery-free card, and such.

Also Abby's response feels like scolding, and fuck that. :P But yeah.

tl;dr: needs moar data, cannot assess as is.

*which for me is different than family, or Person Who Crashes At My Place Enough To Be Family.

*points upwards* This.

Yep, exactly this. And Abby's response is inadequate in every single way. :/

I just realized why I sided so immediately and completely with the LW here, and was so surprised to see commenters saying the grandmother sounded like a reasonable host: It's the paper (paper!) handtowels that are not to be used, but that she still keeps out for the grandaughter's visit. That suggests two sources of discord.

1. She doesn't see her granddaughter as a guest. This may be a mismatch between granddaughter's and grandmother's cultural expectations--I know there are families where 'family' and 'guests' are mutually exclusive circles, and 'family' is the more treasured one, where it would be an insult to let someone use the 'best' anything because those are meant for strangers. In my family, they're overlapping circles--anyone who doesn't live in your home is a guest, and their being related isn't an excuse to not treat them like a guest.

For me, the grandmother's only polite course of action if she didn't want the towels used would be to put them away during the granddaughters visit. To leave them out and then explicity tell the granddaughter not to use them reads as a deliberate snub--engineering an occasion to tell the granddaughter she wasn't good enough to be extended the courtesies due to any stranger.

2. Like I said, I'm aware that familial expectations about who is a guest and what that means can vary, and can clash, a LOT. Most people are aware of this, because most people have met other families.

Because of this, guest bathroom fancy soaps and towels are basically a lavander-scented Admiral Ackbar gif. The grandmother gets some points for telling the granddaughter not to use them instead of berating her after the fact, but those are cancelled out by her setting out DECOY PAPER TOWELS in the first place.

And I think that didn't bother me because in my family, no one uses the paper handtowels. They're decorative (my grandma has had the same stack out on display for decades), and it would be equally bizarre for someone to try to use them as for someone to try to eat the glass fruit on display in the dining room.

So many different familial expectations! Honestly, I keep being surprised that this letter is about the writer's grandmother rather than about her grandmother-in-law, because it reads like the clash of being introduced to a new set of familial expectations late in life.

Right, and this is literally the first I've heard of paper bathroom handtowels, functional or decorative. Paper towels to me are a utility item, and if I saw them by the bathroom sink I would assume there'd been some laundry mishap and the real towels weren't available.

Huh. See that doesn't say that to me at all?

For me, family is more treasured, but it's . . . *waves hands* also comes with more intimacy/trust. The fancy soaps/towels are about performance and insecurity: you have them out because you are afraid you will be Judged otherwise by strangers who have no reason to be good to you. But they are also EXPENSIVE? So when not-Guest guests come, because you trust them and they are safe, you can say "plz don't use the thing, I don't use the thing, it's a Guest Thing".

And I as family/intimate-Guest will totally get this because host is right, they don't NEED to show off for me, they don't need to feel so insecure around me, it's fine, I will use the Normal Stuff like a normal person rather than an Invading Judge.

And then it goes back to ability/time/space in their home: it would, for example, actually be a mild physical hardship for my paternal grandmother to tidy away the basket of guest soaps and guest hand-towels, and also she'd have to, like, store them on the floor of her bedroom or something. Also remembering to do so would be another thing in Cognitive Load. The last thing I want as a guest of someone who is actually family/I actually like/etc is to cause them more put-out-ness like that, so there's that.

Now I mean being that kind of not-guest Guest also comes with rights - like not having to wait until the host offers refreshments if you're thirsty (I mean asking "is it cool if I drink some of this milk?" is still polite because you probably don't know if they're saving it for something, but it's fine to ask that while standing in front of the fridge with the door open, holding up the milk, in a way that WOULD SO MUCH NOT BE COOL AT ALL if they were a Guest without explicit previous invitation) or rights to go into otherwise semi-private areas of the house, or whatever.

And as to point two, you'd THINK, but I have also met a lot of people who assume their take is universal.

All of which is to say, not that you are Wrong (gods no!) but that it all goes back even more to my initial "insufficient data, redo from start" thing - because you know, thinking about it, there ARE people I know with whom the "don't use the guest stuff" WOULD be a deliberate snub!

Like, if someone is on Guest-level restrictions of access (ask before using the washroom/ask which washroom is Allowed and only use that one even if you can see other ones, unless explicitly offered; do not seek own food/water/etc unless explicitly directed; stay only in areas of home indicated to be public and open to you; etc) and you ALSO go "do not use the guest soaps", that is a massive insult to my instincts.

Just none of them are anyone I would be visiting on the basis of expecting not to use the Special Guest Stuff (ie not grandparents - tho great-aunts and uncles, some of them, because I don't know them, unless they were clearly otherwise invoking We Are Family). They're definitely not family/dear friends.

And so without knowing what among these OTHER social rules are in play and what's the general norm in the family vs what's the general norm for the gramma (because often especially at the remove of my grandmother's generation there's a huge difference from even my mother's, let alone mine) . . . .I still can't judge what's being said there.

Yeah, I can't tell either, but enough of the options are non-good to put my hackles up.

Oh definitely. I'm just kind of like the dog looking for the ball that has apparently disappeared: I can't tell which DIRECTION is most likely to Be Bad. There isn't even a geographical reference!

My reaction is, "Don't visit grandma. If you must, get a hotel room."

She badmouths nearly everyone she knows, has unsolicited advice on everything and is generally highly judgmental.

This strikes me as far more of an issue than her expectations of cleanliness.

The cleaning sounds all right--my only problem visiting L's grandparents is that I was so worried they wouldn't let me clean enough! He's 1, he's sticky, PLEASE LET ME WASH SOMETHING FOR YOU. But listening to negative/judgemental people can really take a toll, for sure. I don't know. Once a year seems doable if you're able to think beforehand about what you're getting into and why you're doing it, and understanding that it's temporary.

Is this "she leaves a new note in the shower telling us to wipe down the walls every time we visit" (which I could see being interpreted as passive-aggressive, as a complaint they hadn't done a good enough job last time), or just "there's a permanent note in the bathroom asking guests to wipe down the shower walls"? Because, I mean, I have a permanent note up in my guest bath reminding people to leave the door open when they're done so the cats can get to the litterbox, but it's not there because I think people who are over every month won't remember--it's there so I don't have to worry about forgetting to say something if someone new comes over.

I dunno. I can see how the badmouthing and unsolicited advice are exhausting, but I also don't think "please wipe down the shower after use [something that admittedly I find normative, since I was raised to do it every time I used a shower], and could you take the sheets off the bed before you leave?" are unreasonable expectations for guests. Especially if grandmother is elderly and has a hard time bending down to make beds or whatever. That the LW thinks these minor requests are "taking it too far" makes me question her assessment of other aspects of grandmother's behavior, too.

That the LW thinks these minor requests are "taking it too far" makes me question her assessment of other aspects of grandmother's behavior, too.

And I had just the opposite reading--that the granddaughter has reached bitch-eating-crackers stage with a grandmother who "badmouths nearly everyone she knows, has unsolicited advice on everything and is generally highly judgmental," and that at this point even her reasonable requests and harmless preferences seem like further offenses.

Even whose reasonable requests? (I am genuinely not tracking, which is entirely possibly because I have just reached the end of a week of frantic painting and reno-ing and am stupidly exhausted and thus dim, but I am confused as to who is the bitch-eating-crackers and such?)

(Grandmother's reasonable requests wrt wiping down shower etc!)

Sorry-- granddaughter is being bitch-eating-crackers about grandmother's requests, because of grandmother's judgmentalism and general unpleasantness.

I think the common thread here is that grandmother is making the LW feel unwelcome with her judgment, unsolicited advice, etc., and the LW is perceiving the housekeeping requests as another aspect of feeling unwelcome in the grandmother's home. If she otherwise enjoyed visiting the grandmother and felt like her company was appreciated, even if she thought the housekeeping issues were peculiar or unnecessary I doubt she'd find them so actively annoying.

Ahah! Gotcha. And no, no need to apologize: like I said, not quick on the uptake today anyway, I just realized I was squinting at the text going " . . . I do not understand."

And yeah I agree with that assessment, for sure.

I can see that interpretation, too. I think I had the reading I did because she lists all the cleaning things first, and I tend to assume people write in order of priority.

This makes a lot of sense.

For me, her use of "lonely" made me question if her grandmother is actually manipulative or if the LW has just built her up in her mind to be Generally Awful. If LW had used a phrase such as "I know she's lonely but..." I might be more endeared to her.

I'm trying to find the road map between LW's "She badmouths nearly everyone she knows, has unsolicited advice on everything and is generally highly judgmental" and Abby's "And when she made a negative comment about someone, you should have found something nice to say about the person in response," and I'm just not finding the path. Sure, it's a good thing to counter a negative comment with a positive one, but if you're doing that all the time, as implied by LW, it seems like it's time to suggest a different strategy. So either LW is exaggerating grandma's behavior, or Abby is missing the mark. Yes, put up with some crap periodically and try to deal with your family's quirks, but don't sacrifice yourself to deal with constant emotional drain.

... plus LW is visiting grandmother once a year so might not even meaningfully KNOW the people being badmouthed, if they're local-to-grandmother community.

First, the use of quotation marks around the word lonely instantly made me distrust the LW.

I don't find the grandmother's requests to help her with her housework unreasonable. If anything, I would expect a guest to offer to do what they can to help. It might be impractical to invite a toddler to your house and then expect them to not leave fingerprints everywhere, but if one knows going in that the hostess is picky, it's certainly not that difficult to keep the toddler away from certain surfaces and/or offer to clean them regularly. It just requires effort.

If she really is judgmental and creates a hostile environment, that's one thing. But adding it as an afterthought after several sentences complaining about the condition she wants her house kept in, as if to give those complaints more weight, makes me question it.

bottom line: If the LW feels visiting her grandmother is an expensive obligation and she receives no personal gain from it, then by all means, don't go. Sometimes you have to avoid toxic environments even when it involves family.

But if the granddaughter is simply allergic to the responsibility of being a decent guest, it's not hurting her to spend some time with an older relative who might actually *be* lonely.

... idk if granddaughter leaves feeling exhausted and miserable and dreading the prospect of another visit, that actually does sound like it is hurting her to spend time with said grandmother.

Well, like, I said, if it's a toxic environment for her she doesn't need to go! And that's okay. Forget that whole "family isn't perfect you must tolerate them anyway" nonsense.

But if she feels put out because she's expected to clean up after herself and her children, then she needs a bit of growing up on her part.

I have relatives that fit both the Terrible Grandmother and Terrible Granddaughter scenarios here, and we weren't given enough info to discern between the two. However, the entire LW's post reads to me like she is asking for validation in not visiting her grandmother (especially her last line), not because her grandmother is genuinely awful, but because she simply doesn't want to put in the effort/expense.

In conclusion: families are fucking fraught, we should hatch from eggs in the desert.

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Dear Abby: Visiting Grandma

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