We get to spend the holiday weeks with my husband’s parents, who are good company and considerate guests, in the beautiful and comfortable lakefront house that is one of our favorite places in the world, and we are privileged to also be hosting my husband’s 95-year-old grandfather, who is in great shape mentally and physically and is as wise and kind as he ever was, as a guest over the holidays.
The other way to view that is that we’re stuck with the in-laws for nine days in one house, we have to give up our own bedroom during all that time, and cooking and cleaning for five people (two of whom have food restrictions) is a hell of a lot of work.
I’m hoping I can keep the former perspective rather than the latter most of the time. It helps that everything I said about them is true, and also that my FIL is very happy to help with cleanup and my MIL with cooking. The thing I mind most is giving up our bedroom. The other alternative is to keep our own room, give the grandfather the best guest room, and put the parents-in-law on the futon (it has a spring mattress and is supportive and comfortable). But our room has the best bed. It also has an en-suite master bathroom, which is convenient when you have kidneys that have seen most of a century go by, so we’ll probably give it up. Instead of staying on the futon ourselves, though, we may stay in a downstairs room, on either an inflatable bed or a thick eggcrate foam pad we bought to make our spare bed in Taiwan comfortable. (That bed was nearly as hard as a floor, if the foam made it comfortable, and it did, it ought to be OK on a floor.) Or both. That way we have our own bath down there, which even includes a steam shower, and it’s very convenient to get up and go erg in the next room over.