<p>My MIL was truly hurt when any of her 5 boys’ families stayed elsewhere. Four of them traveled from out-of-town, for decades.
She was the ultimate matriarch.</p>
<p>After a while, we learned that she really wanted unobstructed sleepover time with her school-aged and young adult grandchildren, not us. She loved their tousled heads in the mornings.</p>
<p>The acceptable compromise was to leave the grandkids in her house, and stay as a couple at a motel. But we only got away with that when there were so many other brothers in town that we couldn’t all cram in together.</p>
<p>If we were the only brother-family visiting, no way could we stay in a hotel. Nope. We slept on the 50-year-old single beds whose springs were last sprung when all were adolescents. Everyone woke up holding their back… </p>
<p>But when several brothers’ families came in all at the same time, some of us did go to motels (just the parent couple). Grandma had a ball with the grandkids, and some of us parent types got a romantic night off. We all showed up for every meal at “the big house,” or she would have been bereft. And once in the week, we’d take her out to dinner, which was not her fancy except on these special occasions.</p>