Reply to Are my expectations for cross-country visits unreasonable?

Forum Index » Adult Children

Reply to "Are my expectations for cross-country visits unreasonable?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]At that age I lived on the opposite coast from my parents and 2 flights away from them. I had 10 days of vacation time per year and at my second job I had to wait until they were fully accrued, I was past a 90 day probation, and I was in the calendar year after the year I started. So when I started in July, I couldn’t take days until January and I didn’t have access to all the days in that calendar year, only whatever fraction accumulated each pay period.

I was also in an office, but even now I am expected to be logged in until 5 pm on a Friday. To get to the airport after that meant an 8 pm flight at the earliest, and usually a 10 pm red eye and morning connection was more practical. And then I’d have to repeat it on Sunday morning if I didn’t have vacation days. It was a lot of work for 18 hours of visiting and my mom took it for granted. She was retired and could have easily visited me, but it was “such a hard trip.”

The few times my mom visited me, she would spend the first 1-2 days napping and complained about jet lag (east coast to west coast), and then once we had kids she would be frustrated that we couldn’t pull the kids from school or miss work to stay at home and hang out with her while she played on her iPad.

My mom was self-centered about visits so I slowly pulled away and visited less and less. I haven’t been to her city in 5 years. She can no longer easily travel and puts up a fuss about how no one visits her and never visited her. I think back to the frantic race to the airport on Thanksgiving Wednesdays, my tight young adult budget that was repeatedly broken because of limited and expensive flights to her city, and the frustration of not being able to join friends for weekends away or adventure because my mom expected that my vacation days were for her, and I feel so sad.

Nothing I do short of moving next door to her would have made her happy and I regret trying to please her at the expense of my own life.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics