The view from dinner during my girls' weekend
My husband travels quite a bit for work. He is usually gone at least one, and sometimes two, nights a week. Any mom with a husband who travels frequently will tell you that everything bad – from sick kids to a flooded basement — seems to happen when Daddy is gone. Dealing with the crises on your own becomes a Mommy Badge of Honor. But what about when Mommy is gone and something bad happens? What happens then?
This summer, an opportunity arose for me to go away on a rare girls’ weekend. One of my dearest friends in the world – a woman I met in junior high school — is pregnant with her first child. I really wanted to spend some time with my friend before she had her baby and it became even harder to spend time together than it already was. So, I threw out the idea of getting a small group of our high school friends together for a girls’ weekend. We somehow managed to find a weekend that worked for the four different families and secured the use of a beach condo. Although for me this plan meant spending several hundred dollars on a plane ticket and leaving my children for three days, my husband could not have been more supportive or encouraging. He knows how much my friends mean to me and how much a mother of young children needs a break every now and again.
I looked forward to the weekend with my friends for months. Although I felt some anxiety and guilt about leaving, as I boarded the plane to head east, I became increasingly relaxed. Traveling by yourself when you are used to traveling with kids feels amazingly luxurious and self-indulgent. My friends picked me up at the airport and we had a giddy drive to the beach, all of us reveling in our childlessness and the ability to have long, uninterrupted conversations. (The two women who picked me up from the airport are both therapists, so conversations with them are not casual affairs. They tend to ask a lot of probing questions.) When we met our pregnant friend at the condo, we all felt so happy and grateful to be able to spend this time together.
The weekend at the beach was pure bliss. We had perfect weather. We slept in. We went out for leisurely dinners. We lounged on the beach and by the pool. We talked in that way that women, and old friends, need to talk — about our husbands, our children, our professional ambitions. We reminisced about high school and gossiped about mutual friends. We read books and took naps. We celebrated our friend who was only weeks away from joining the ranks of the mothers. It was everything a girls’ weekend should be.
However, back at my house, my husband’s weekend with the kids was rapidly turning into a disaster. Daddy tried taking the kids up north for their own beach experience, but that was cut short when Zuzu started vomiting. At home, she spiked a fever and complained of a sore throat. J.R., at three and a half, is a walking Oedipus complex – sample quote: “Little girls like dads and little boys like moms, right Mama?” — and was having a hard time without the object of his affection. His behavior ranged from the merely annoying to the appalling, as he threw tantrums about things that could not be fixed without altering the time-space continuum.
Knowing how stressed I would get if I knew what was going on at home, my husband first tried hiding it from me, and then, when he could no longer do that, tried glossing over how bad it was. But eventually, after Zuzu vomited minutes after taking her medicine, he was forced to call me to ask for advice. But even then he assured me that he had everything under control. Furthermore, there was nothing I could do anyway. And given that, the least I could do was enjoy my weekend, right? So I put my anxiety and stress aside and went out for a lovely dinner with my friends – perhaps drinking more than my share of a bottle of wine.
But once I finally turned in for the night, I could not distract myself from my anxiety any longer. I spent the entire night tossing and turning, wishing desperately to be at home with my children. I felt so guilty for leaving – and not for work, like my husband does, but for fun. Intellectually, I knew that my husband could handle everything. I knew that I had dealt with equally bad situations on my own when he was traveling for work. And I knew that there was truly nothing I could do from halfway across the country. But it felt so wrong, and so self-indulgent, to be away from home on a frolic of my own — as torts law calls a non-work-related trip — when my children, and my husband, were so plainly having a rough time.
By the time I arrived home on Sunday evening, things had improved. The worst of Zuzu’s virus had passed and J.R. and his father had reached a detente. My husband had handled the whole situation with aplomb. He had even managed to do those little things, like make Jello, that comfort sick children. And there were absolutely no negative repercussions from my absence during the crisis.
Although I would not have wished the weekend my husband had on my worst enemy, there was some good that came out of the experience. I learned what it is like to be away during a crisis and what it means to have to trust your spouse to take care of things. My husband learned what it is like to be the one left behind. I was also reminded of just how nurturing and competent my husband is as a father. I hope the kids noticed that as well. And maybe, just maybe, the next time one of them is sick or hurt, he or she won’t automatically cry, “Mommy!”
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