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Christi Diggs
on May 23 2013 - 06:00 AM
A drop of spin, a cup of deception and tsp. politics=Apathy
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Filippo
You know that dream when you’re headed to a big appointment and you know you’re missing something?
Purse? Check. Laptop? Check. Cell phone? Check.
Nope got everything. Except, then you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Yep, standing there with no shirt, just a bra.
Traveling alone, without kids and husband, is like standing there in just my bra. Something pretty major missing.
Now, it can be fun. No boys bickering over the Nintendo DS. No little guy saying he’s hungry every five minutes. No husband napping anytime he’s seated in a chair for more than two minutes.
Just me and a book or an iPad to scan the Internet. Want a Sprite Zero? Just go grab it. No little hand to grab. No extra M&Ms to grab and eat half the bag.
Nice, huh?
Until the little kid next to me at the airport starts screaming. Why can’t he have ice cream? Or then I get mesmerized by the husband and wife bickering about their trip.
Yep, just like that I’m with the family.
Husband's ending:
And just like that my wife left town for work last Thursday, left the country, actually, and left me to finish this without her.
"On the blog, is there any way you can cap it off with something," she wrote in her last email a few minutes ago. It's about 7 p.m. right now, and a little after 2 a.m. where she is.
I have to admit I’m a (reasonably) faithful reader of my wife’s blogs, but I wasn’t sure where she was going with this one.
I took it to mean that no matter how hard she may try to get away from the family, and how blissful it may seem, all it takes is one screeching kid, or a squabbling couple, or an inattentive husband drooling on his shirt mid-nap for the unpleasantness of family-life to come crashing back down around her.
Well, two can play at this game.
You know, Mom being away from home can have its perks too.
No one to ask me to water the garden when I told her last spring, and every spring, that I hate the garden, and that I would have no role in it whatsoever.
Or if you’re 3-year-old Youngest, no one to tell him he can’t watch Family Guy, even though most of the jokes are over his head.
And if you’re 14-year-old Oldest, no one to insist he wear jeans in 90-degree weather to his volunteer job at the library. That’s exactly how kids get labeled a dork, Mom.
But then I wasn’t exactly sure I’d interpreted my wife’s words correctly. After all, I’m a dude. So I hit up my mom and sister, who as luck would have it are both women.
My mom, who is smarter than me, pointed out that when you miss someone you never just miss the good things.
She lost my Dad to Alzheimer’s in February, and said that although she supposes she should appreciate some of the relative freedoms she has now - being able to run to the grocery store or a hair appointment, or even going to bed without getting my dad ready - the "conveniences" never outweigh the missingness.
And I guess it’s like that with road-mom. For the first time since, well, ever, we can’t communicate by phone, and so all we have is the occasional email to keep each other updated.
In a weird way, at least on my end, it’s kind of like we’re dating again, in that uncomfortable stage when you’ve been on one or maybe two dates with someone and aren’t sure if they like you or not.
Only one email today? What could that mean? Maybe she’s just busy, or maybe she’s struck up a friendship with a striking Italian named Filippo. I saw his picture on the her conference Web site, so I know he exists.
But now I’m channeling my wife’s paranoia. And she’s the queen of it. Really. Never to be outdone.
Maybe the analogy my wife used at the start of this about the dream where she's about to head out the door in her bra is a good one. But she gets off easy. In my dreams I'm usually already in public somewhere, and I'm not wearing pants. At least I think they're dreams. But the feeling's the same: no matter how freeing it might seem for awhile, being without the shirt, the pants, it just isn't you.
I guess the bottom line is that as bad as mom feels when she's traveling without the family, it’s exponentially worse for all of us when she’s not at home.
Jeff Strait is a sometimes freelance writer and not a professional mom blogger.
You both are fantastic writers! And you work well as a team. Keep doing the dual blogs once in awhile. It's fun to get both perspectives. All of this is so true with us. Last fall I spent a week helping my then-pregnant sister, and left my husband with the kids. It was simultaneously freeing and suffocating being without them. My husband could get a break from my nagging, and I could get a break from the constant everything. It's so important to have that, then you get a chance to miss Dad/Mom/the kids. If you never are apart, it's hard to fully appreciate what you have, right?Nice blog and I agree with granolamom. The co-written blog is a good style for the two of you. But I still think Dad should have gone with Mom to Italy. :)I agree. Like the dual blog. Myself, I attended a conference for a week in May in San Francisco. When I left, I was so excited about what I would do in such a beautiful city on my own with no one else to tie me down or hold me back. You know what I did? Walked around town sightseeing, homesick the whole time for my family, buying too many souvenirs, because everything I saw reminded me of them.Just paid a crazy amount of money in the Paris airport to get wifi long enough to check mom2mom. And I must say husband did great. Better than me. Well all but the part of me being crazy paranoid. Ha, ha. The man sure knows me. Still don't see the family for another 36 hours. Ugh!!!! Now I'll go buy them more gifts. Extra for husband.
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