Jane_Doe said:
Congrats/condolences on this big life change. I know your wife is happy and I have followed some of your many sagas that you have related online including the start of this one (was out of town when the "big" news came, tho). I just wonder if you won't miss them anyway once they are gone? Or is it one of those where you start to miss them, smack yourself in the head and then say, "What am I nuts!?! Remember when they (fill in the episode)." I guess you guys will just have to wait and see. BTW, what does your DD think of all this? Why do the PILs have to move in with you prior to the move? Did I miss something?
It shall be interesting to see how your BIL & SIL make out with them. I imagine you and your DW are anticipating watching it all with some degree of glee?
Right now I'm firmly in the "won't miss 'em" camp and just about ready to e-mail Dr. Phil. My apologies for yet another long occupational-therapy post but hopefully my lessons learned will help some of you avoid repeating our mistakes-- or maybe you guys have suggestions.
After our two decades of military experience, spouse and I have some credibility with "emotional distancing" and we know a thing or two about packing & moving. Her parents are going way overboard in all categories and moving day is still over three weeks away, but heaven forbid that they talk about it with us "kids". I don't know what's fueling their behavior but my FIL, in particular, is heading for cardiac jeopardy. We also appear to have been assigned the role of 24/7 crisis response.
For his last decade of retirement this man, now almost 74 years old, has never arisen before 10 AM. Yet in the last two weeks I've had two "come over right now" calls at 8 AM asking for tools or obsessing over the packing list. They're also giving us many of their possessions as "too heavy to be worth moving back to the Mainland" yet demanding that we get them out of their house now now now. So we attempt to respond promptly to each "crisis" within one day-- but we've turned off the phone ringers until March. MIL claims nothing's wrong.
This week it was the "termite alarm". Their solid wood 1964 TV cabinet was unceremoniously dumped on the curb when a small pile of sawdust was discovered inside. We were told to get an exterminator down there ASAP (Hawaii has a big problem with Formosan underground termites) but the infestation is actually powder-post beetles. FIL won't keep poisons like "Raid" in the house so we brought down a can and showed him what to do. He verbally dithered for about 15 minutes (managing to repeatedly question our credibility in the process), eventually decided not to risk the whole packout with a piece of "contaminated furniture", and junked it. Then we discovered more sawdust piles in the cabinets of their five-foot-tall stained-glass display windows-- so he had to get over his poison & contamination fears and finally drenched the wood in that chemical-- and then complained about the smell. They're still obsessing about powder-post beetles infesting their new condo despite my explanation that their furniture will see a couple of weeks of freezing weather before it gets there. However we're just inexperienced kids so now they're consulting furniture & moving experts. And of course my spouse is fuming on the sidelines about "Not leaving any of their stained-glass crap in MY house!" MIL says nothing is wrong, they're doing fine.
After asking us a bunch of questions about Craigslist, they're selling some 50-year-old Danish Modern wedding furniture on it. We know this not because they told us or asked for help but because my spouse, a Craigslist maven, found their ad. It's terrible copy without any real info or photos and way too expensive but they didn't ask for our help and we couldn't offer because weren't supposed to "know" that they'd done it. They finally brought it up while kvetching about what a waste of time Craigslist is, no one offers what their stuff is worth, they're only getting calls from whackos, and so forth. Now they're "running out of time" and a bunch of their furniture will end up on our front lanai, where my spouse will sell it. (On Craigslist.) But when I ask my MIL how we can help she says everything's fine.
Money is becoming a family-breaking issue. You already know how I feel about their 100% fixed-income portfolio giving them a miserly attitude toward spending, but their latest behavior makes me wonder about their mental health. In the late '90s, when the market was flying high, they gifted their daughter with some cash and advised us that we could spend it on their long-term care when the time came. We were first told to invest it safely but later repeatedly admonished "No, no, it's your money, do whatever you want." Uncertainty over interpreting those subtle family signals has kept that money fenced off in CDs for nearly a decade instead of being treated as "hers". (Of course I've had to do the fiduciary bookkeeping, pay taxes on the interest, and so on.) We haven't dared touch it or incorporate it into any of our financial plans.
Good thing-- because the first piece of business after the "moving to the Mainland" announcement was "... and we want you to give us 'our' money back to buy the condo and pay the moving expenses". (Thank goodness spouse hadn't bought b33ver cheese futures on margin with "her" money, eh?) Spouse broke the CDs, paid the early-redemption fees, and wrote them a check. She says that if it makes them go away and never "give" her any money again then it's worth it.
Last week MIL mentioned in passing that they'd be getting a mortgage on the condo. Spouse and I had one of those long marital asset-allocation discussions and decided to offer to loan her parents the mortgage and save them a point or two on interest rates & closing costs-- however they cared to do it, we'd treat it as a loan and even write it off if necessary. We e-mailed them and the reply was "Thank you, the arrangements have already been made." The closing is still three weeks away so this appears to be more of a Miss Manners polite excuse, which is fine with us. The subject will never be discussed in this family again, and this time we really mean it. After all, everything's fine.
Yet although they've declined our offer to help save thousands in mortgage money, my FIL wants me to pay him the $6.59/bag it cost him to buy three bags of water-conditioner salt that he's leaving behind. (Sure, Dad-- run me a tab and let me know what I owe you.) He's so intense about things these days that you can practically see his hair smolder. He hasn't smiled or joked or relaxed since the announcement-- just barked out orders or complaints and rushed from one self-imposed crisis to the next. My MIL says everything's fine.
I've learned to be very wary of parental gifts and to never never ever again offer to loan money to family. But our consciences are clear.
Before they decided to move back to the Mainland, PIL had agreed to take care of our teen during our own upcoming Mom & Dad Mainland trip. They've done this a couple times before and it's been no problem, but now we're getting the distinct impression that they're sorry they'd agreed to move into our house to take care of their granddaughter. But the stakes are high-- we don't want to let them out of it because this is our last grownups trip before our 9th-grader leaves the nest and we could use a little marital-harmony bliss right now. An extra benefit is that we'll be on travel during the actual packout instead of being dragooned into watching the movers. And although they haven't let us know yet, we think that they're flying out the same day that we're returning. But spouse is making this trip for Navy Reserve business, so I'm mentally ready to eat a non-refundable plane ticket if PILs dig in their heels and insist that they can't fulfill their grandparent obligations.
You would think that with 30-45 days until your possessions arrive at your new home, you'd take a nice long trip. Australia. Japan. Tahiti. A cruise to California. Heck, even a Gettysburg Elderhostel. Go now before you age in place! But no, they're flying to move in with my BIL and his wife for the 4-6 weeks until moving day and fret over the pristine new (but empty) condo that they're paying a mortgage on yet can't live in without furniture. (Maybe they'll drag everyone out shopping for their first new furniture in five decades.) So now all my in-laws are equally unhappy. My spouse is experiencing heavy guilty schadenfreude in between happy dances.
Our kid has known for years that Grandma & Grandpa don't have to follow some household rules that the kid would never get away with ignoring. Lately she's been picking up on other generational inconsistencies (especially the casual racism and the failure to enjoy Hawaii's culture) so their move is probably a good idea. Our kid is also old enough to hop on a plane to visit them anytime, and we'll pay for the trip. But my MIL insists that everything's fine.
I used to feel maudlin that my own mother died before we developed an adult relationship, and that my dad only swaps a couple e-mails a year. Lately, however, I've been feeling like the lucky one.
This whole drama can't be a case of Rock Fever, can it? Maybe someday we'll learn why PIL are really so hot to get out of here and under so much self-imposed stress. But considering the current degree of family communications, it's not likely. Everything's fine. "OK, fine!"
