My husband works weekends and is out of the house for more than fourteen hours a day on the days he is working. Sometimes, due to the nature of his job, he is gone from Wednesday through Sunday, on long business trips every week. Essentially, that leaves me at home, like a single mother, but not, to take care of the girls and the home, with the full responsibility of schooling, doctors appointments, cleaning, laundry, feedings, bathing, homework, fighting, and art and science projects. I am the 24/7. I am the rock. I am tired on so many levels that I either complain about everything or am rendered completely unable to speak, too stunned am I to admit that I cannot believe how I've found myself down this rabbit hole when I was once sipping gorgeous roses at the bar, wearing heels, make up, jewelry, some hot outfit, and a smile wide and honest.
A good friend asked me the other day if I got lonely being with the kids so much, er, all the time. She knows that at times when I need a break I will have a sitter come and play, entertain, and watch the girls so I can regain my bearings, but she also knows that all the time, every day, even if there weren't lots of activities and excitement, fights, poos and spills, can be a lot. Sometimes it's too much. Often. Unless you have experienced it, it's nearly impossible to imagine what the constant chatter, "Mommommomuhmommymommommommommy," paper cutting, coloring that gets in the table, the floor, Oops, the wall, *sorry*, spills, pulls, falls, dropsies can do to your psyche. Add this to the basic household responsibilities which entail taking care of absolutely everything, and you only have an inkling what it's like daily. This schedule cannot be broken down in linear time as there are many dimensions and phases that define the stress. One cannot say, for example, "Oh, you have been home with the kids for just six hours after school? My workday is 8, 10, 12 hours long." Uh, yeah. Being at the ready, down for whatever, all the time blows all most other gigs out of the water.
But do I get lonely? The truth is, I have been doing this for years. Our move to Barbados marked so many transitions in our lives. We were newly married, living abroad together for the first time, had a new baby, Lily (then a new three year old) was starting school, and I found myself home. Home. All the time. With postpartum depression and culture shock. I could not work, which I had done all my adult life, and was very uncomfortable giving it up. It made sense at the time because Virginie was a tiny baby and needed me. I told myself it all made sense and that I would be able to study French, maybe even paint, meditate, and swim in the backyard pool. Make discoveries about myself while the baby slept, do light cleaning and housework.
Well that was a bust. In two years I got through the first level of discs in the Rosetta Stone program and my French improved only from my crazy attempts at talking to a French ex-pat who, in trying to encourage my comfort with the language, spoke only French with me. Painting? Never saw a brush. It was impossible to meditate in that heat, swatting mosquitoes, nursing a baby, and pacing the floor. I did take a swim or two in the pool so there were surely some comforts, but I did so most often when baby Virginie fell asleep o,r in the end, was at school. I never stayed too long for fear of some freak accident leaving me stranded or drowned in the pool with no one home to help me or at least call emergency. Thank you, Mom, for suggesting that every time I mentioned possibly going for a swim.
I remember afternoons along the shore, staring at the Caribbean, taking photos that made our life look surreal, unimaginable in its magnificence and beauty. We were tan and covered in sand, looking like the Swiss Family Robinson lost at sea. The waves would lap at our feet and our legs as we sat at the water's edge. It's those stolen moments (and they were indeed stolen from the hubby's crazy work life where he was on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) that I recall when I am trying to convince myself that we can do this. We'd raced to the beach as soon as he'd found a moment free, a small reprieve from the Keystone Kitchen he'd been expected to lead, made up of untrained locals and immovable union reps in a small country with big dreams but often without the skill set to make them come true.
Three years later we are doing it all again. The girls are older and somewhat wiser to the game. They know it's all me, but they are also greater manipulators. They knew that I feel terrible that they cannot be with their father, so I overcompensate for this with too much attention, too many small excursions, and too many projects. I have exhausted myself trying to give them the impression that there are two of us here. And that the two of us are secure. And that we are a happy family. I have no turquoise blue sea to distract them or myself. I often wonder how military families do it with deployments of 6, 18, 24 months. How do the stay-at-homes keep it up? I mean, when someone is gone so long, isn't it hard to conjure up those same feelings? Does absence truly make the heart grow fonder? Or is is resentful? Bitter? Indifferent?
I know this is the way of many modern families. Long distance love affairs, weekend meetings and rendez-vous. Living in different cities, coming together on the weekends, seeing each other at the end of the night on the computer for a cyber-good night. Pictures, photos, promises of tomorrow that cannot be kept today.
We built sand castles every weekend on the shoreline. Elaborate cities with tunnels, and rivers, and turrets. All four of us would work on some part of it either until we were exhausted or the shore took part of our home back to sea. Sometimes we'd rebuild and sometimes we thought best to let it go.
(c) Copyright 2012. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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