My Turn to Be The House Guest

Last week I wrote about being the host to houseguests. This week I am the houseguest. I write this column from Central New York, where my father-in-law is celebrating his 70th birthday. Such a milestone warrants a visit from family, so we loaded up our van with luggage and gifts and junk food and headed west.

With Ben Franklin’s quote in mind (fish and houseguests), we decide to break up our trip by staying no more than three days in a row at my in-laws. From there we will spend one night in Niagara Falls, back to the in-laws for two more nights, and then a night in Cooperstown on the way home. Hopefully this plan will reduce any houseguest stink we might generate.

Unlike my own guests, we arrive at 5:00 p.m., the exact time we predicted. Except there’s no one home. The house is locked up tighter than Fort Knox and my husband’s spare key is on his key ring back in Hanover. Then it starts to rain. Okay kids, back in the van. Ha ha, isn’t this fun? Luckily my father-in-law arrives within a few minutes, having driven down to the village to pick up the mail (yes, they still have villages here in Central New York, and even some hamlets too).

We haul in our stuff as my mother-in-law arrives with several dozen bags of groceries. Hugs all around. By the time our luggage is unpacked and the groceries put away, it is past six o’clock, the time when my children typically eat dinner. We chat and catch up on our lives and finally someone says,” I guess we should get dinner started” as my kids begin to gnaw off their own fingers. After another trip down to the village for local corn, my father-in-law throws some of his special, homemade burgers on the grill and we finally sit down to dinner (it’s 7:45 by the way). I am the guest this week, so I can’t really complain about the difference in meal schedules. We are thrusting ourselves into their lives. I count myself lucky that my in-laws are retired. When they were working full time they sometimes wouldn’t eat dinner until 10.

We opt not to shower the kids before bed since the water pressure in my in-laws house is quite low. Showering is a little like standing in a fine mist, and if someone accidentally flushes the toilet or washes their hands, you’re either scalded with the needle-like mist or the water stops altogether. If you just stand there for several minutes, covered in suds, eventually the spray will resume.

When it’s time to turn in, my kids bed down in the spare bedroom while my husband and I sleep in his old room. We open the one window in our room that has a screen (there are wasps building a nest inside the other window, so lets just leave that one shut, shall we?) I think our mattress was constructed pre-WWI, and as my husband and I involuntarily roll towards each other in the middle, (are there any springs left in this thing?) I think that this is what I deserve for making my sister and her kids sleep on that horrible, pullout sofa in our basement last week.

On the upside, my in-laws live on a farm, so there is always something interesting to do. My children, who can’t be bothered to pick up their clothes, shove each other out of the way to get to the barn to clean up horse poop. High up on the hillside there are fossils to be found, trilobites to discover with a hammer and chisel. The neighbor’s bull has escaped, so if we’re lucky we’ll get a firsthand look at a tranquilizer gun in action.

I sympathize with my sister who had to wrangle her two little ones for (gulp) five days, away from their comfort zone, having to conform to my routine. For the next two days, my family and I will adapt to my in-laws’ schedule. We will make ourselves both helpful and unobtrusive. We will drink half-caff coffee (ouch) and send the kids outside when they decide its time to beat on each other. Because that’s what good guests do. And if I learn anything this week it’s that payback’s a…

Well, you know.