I haven't allowed my husband to see me cry in that ugly, snot-dripping, hyperventilating way since we left Barbados, where that sight was a common occurrence. As in most relationships I have had throughout my life, I am cautious and read the other person's reactions before I go on willy-nilly just expressing the hell out of myself. That's part of my raisin'. I know that my real feelings, the true strength of them, can blow the roof off the house and that, generally speaking, "nobody got time fuh dat." When I am all love and light, when I cannot give enough of myself, when I pour in and cannot see the space between myself and another person (most often my children, sometimes my husband), it is so good to be around me. I am mistaken for easy-going and good-natured and happy go lucky to those who have only experienced me this way. Oh, how I wish that I were.
When my husband told me last night that he would be leaving to work during the Thanksgiving holiday not on Wednesday as expected, but today, Monday, immediately, I just went silent. I wasn't even holding it in. I was stunned. I just slipped back behind myself, behind the knot in my heart, in my stomach, the knot that ran the cord of all my chakras from my coccyx to the crown of my head, and I disintegrated. I could not look him in the eye. Did not say a word to him. Suddenly, I was very, very busy. There was laundry to be done, knapsacks to be packed, lists to make and double check. I got to yelling at the girls to clean their playroom and mumbled on about how they would all be sorry if Mommy was not able to take care of everything like she does. But I did not cry.
I didn't cry because I always tell myself, as I have even written here many times, that so many others have it worse--soldiers' families, police officers, essential emergency personnel. They do not get to spend holidays together. They find ways to endure. But our situation is not like theirs. Because we, WE, we? chose this. Because he is a private chef, my husband makes much more money working the holidays than he does during his regular schedule. This is because I know, we know, everyone knows that taking a man away from his family during this time is a huge sacrifice and that he must be well compensated. For years I have accepted, even preached, the value of this package on our family's financial situation, have asked friends and neighbors to help me give the girls the best Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's possible, have sat up, without tears, putting toys together, writing notes from Santa, eating the cookies and carrots, then gone quietly to bed next to the girls hoping I've pulled it off again.
Without tears because if I let myself feel what I am really missing, I may never stop crying. I have spent the better part of our relationship longing for him, wanting him closer, wanting him to be with me. Long before there were children, the game of cat and mouse was being played. I chase and he runs or at least hides. He might hide behind work or his culture, his language or his accent. Before we were 'we' he hid behind his bad marriage, a miserable divorce, financial and professional fears, it doesn't matter. He is hiding. He does not want to be seen all the way and certainly does not want to see me for much the same reason as I cannot cry in front of him. And so I hide too. Hide behind the busy work, the busy-ness of being a mother and a wife, of hosting holidays without him, don't dare tell him I'd rather have him than the income, too afraid he will say "but we need it" which will make me second guess how important I am, we are, anyone is to anyone. And that is not the way I think. It cannot be.
When you have chased for love your entire life and it sits down in front of you to catch its breath and then runs off again, it is so easy to take up that game. I am playing again. It is so familiar. My experience of love in my youth is the reason I try so hard to show my children how to give it and receive it. I don't want them on the prowl for anything that looks like it, seems like it, but just isn't. I don't want them to suffer more than they have to for love and a peaceful heart. When they cry for their father, express how much they miss him, need him, want him, I support them but have not shown them how it hurts to be apart. I don't want to blow their minds. I don't want to blow my own. But if they never see how to love from us, if they learn only to hide, to camouflage, keep stony-faced when they are full to bursting, they will be doomed. They will disengage from their families, disconnect, and forget to tell the people they love just how much so and forget to beg them to stay.
Today was a bad day because Didier left this morning, a busy Monday morning that required too much attention to too much else, so I kissed him quickly and said goodbye. It is the first of too many goodbye kisses that signify he is gone for the holidays. We have done this for years and it never gets easier, but it looks the same every time. A fairly innocuous kiss goodbye and then days or weeks of separation where we pretend that being apart like this is normal. We ask how the other is doing without really wanting the answer, without really answering. The ugly, twisted face came hours later after school drop off and three stops at three different grocery stores. What I don't know, what I wonder, what I hope, is that somewhere he is making the ugly-crying face for me. That sometimes he is the cat and I am the mouse and that somewhere in the middle we can meet, hold on, and stop this vicious cycle.
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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