Maybe it's an immigrant thing, viewing life through a lens of scarcity. There's certainly a cultural dimension, an inheritance from serial generations bent on fostering a sense of inadequacy. They try so hard to resist, I know they do. Yet sometimes, without realizing it, they revert to the mother tongue, which is guilt.
It plays out like this:
Us (via video conference): Happy (event name here)!
Them: It's been so long since we spoke, we miss talking to you!
Us (confused, a little offended): But we are speaking to you - right now. How about enjoying this moment?
Them: We know! We love it. We just wish you did it more!
Us: (Internal monologue: If you didn't always try to make us feel guilty when we call, it might happen more often.)
Before quarantine, it would happen without fail to taint the end of even the most pleasant visits.
Us (piling into car): We really loved our time with you. Thanks for being great hosts.
Them: We only wish you'd visit more often!
Us: We are two working adults with young kids with extracurricular activities and sports that occur primarily on weekends. It's no small effort to make these visits happen, so it's probably best for all to view them with appreciation for the effort that goes into making them happen.
Them: Of course, that's what we mean. Also, we wish this would happen more often.
Us: I know that there's love behind those words, and I know that you are trying to say 1) Thank you for coming and 2) We appreciate the work you put in to make this happen. It's just that when you express love as guilt, it can bury the sentiment too deeply for us to see it.
Every day at work, I see horrible things happen to nice people. In the ER, in fact, it's a working assumption that the nicer the person, the more catastrophic the diagnosis - the church lady who faints on a Sunday is bound to have pancreatic cancer, while the meth head who falls from a two story rooftop deck walks away unscathed.
These experiences reinforce the message that time is precious, one already heightened by the COVID pandemic. So we'll keep calling, and (once quarantine is lifted) visiting. We'll try to wince less visibly when guilt seeps into the conversation.
Most importantly, we'll try that much harder not to speak words laden with guilt to our own children.