My husband went away on a business trip last week. Several people expressed their condolences to me: “It must be so hard to do all the extra work with him gone. Let me know if you need anything.”
When he first started traveling a few years back, these comments had me worried.
“You’ll be outnumbered by your kids!” they said.
“They’ll sense your weakness!” they said.
“It’s so hard to do it alone!” they said.
I worked myself into a real tizzy thinking I was going to crack under the pressure. Then, day one came and went with no issues.In fact, it went swimmingly. I figured it was just a lucky fluke and prepared for the next day’s onslaught. This went on for the entire week and when it was time to head out to the airport to pick up my husband, I realized that I was more rested than I had been in years.
I started to think that sending my husband away was like sending away four children. Rather than solo parenting increasing my workload, it actually decreased it.By about half.
When my husband is in town, he works a lot of hours in far away places. When we decided that I would stay home with our kids, I decided that my homemaking responsibilities included taking care of my husband. After all, he was working hard and commuting for hours every day. It seemed only fair that I would pick up the slack.
Somehow, that turned into maintaining another dependent. I mean, I get that I created this situation by taking away nearly all of his responsibilities and/or life skills, but it happened so gradually, that I never even noticed. From the first 4 a.m. breakfast to the 429th load of laundry, co-dependency just snuck right up on me.
One day I’m reading a recipe, trying to figure out how the hell one cuts in butter while keeping a hysterical infant from exploding into a million pieces of sadness and misery. And the next, I’m coordinating semi-annual dental cleanings for the four of us, at four different offices, while planning a playdate and renewing my husband’s vehicle registration at the DMV. I had slowly absorbed control of the household.
When I packed his suitcase and dropped him at the departure gate that first time, I was unaware of the freedom that awaited me. Not only did my kids not have dinner requests more complex than peanut butter and honey, they didn’t care when it was served. Or even if it came on a plate. I think we went two days without filling the dishwasher.
And then there was the sleeping and not waking up on demand. I was homeschooling my kids and never planned early morning activities. When the husband is home, the alarm goes off at 4 a.m. and it is brutal. Four a.m. is less a time to wake-up and more a time that bars close. And we don’t have a gentle, birds-chirping or light-rain-falling alarm. No, our alarm is from our college days and is legit now considered retro. I’ve seen it in a catalog. So it makes that God-awful “ERR ERR ERR” noise that is reminiscent of a nuclear detonation warning. I’ve told him that the day he retires, I am taking it into the driveway and beating it with a sledgehammer.
My husband works in the building trades and therefore can only wear his clothing once before washing. There is no, “maybe I can just dust this off for tomorrow.” In the winter, this can result in an entire load of laundry from one day’s work. That means one load of laundry a day, just for him. Which means two loads of laundry a day, if I don’t want to drown in dirty laundry. If you do that math, 1 + 1 = sucks.
But when he’s away, I just have kid-sized clothing and mom clothes. And as any mom knows, if it doesn’t smell and/or have any visible stains, it’s clean. I have developed a tremendous appreciation for aprons.
So now, when I see the calendar marked up with travel plans, I don’t break out into a cold sweat. I don’t worry how I will survive the coming days. I don’t even slow down. Instead, I dream of not making a single complete meal and sleeping like a starfish.
Don’t get me wrong. Of course, I miss my husband. He’s great and all. But when we text each other like this:
Him: I need a special key to get on my floor and my room has been upgraded. We got kicked out of a pool yesterday (it was closed.) I told security that it was ok because I am staying on the 16th floor. He disagreed…
Me: Please don’t get arrested. It’s been a trying month already.
I think maybe I’ll be ok if he stays away a little longer.
I recently had an impromptu – and admittedly disturbing – conversation with some cousins about prison hooch. If my husband does get arrested, it seems like something to help pass the time. I looked up a few recipes for this jailhouse classic and, though The Modern Drunkard Magazine – yes, that’s a real thing – has a couple of authentic recipes, they both made the tester vomit. So I’m going to go with the Whole-Foods-craft-version offered by LA Magazine.
Bottoms up!
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Laurie Nigro, is the mother of two biological children and one husband. She also takes care of a menagerie of animals that leave throw-up around for her to step in in the middle of the night. Laurie’s passionate about frugal, natural living, which is a nice way of saying she’s a kombucha-brewing, incense-burning, foodie freak who tries really hard not to spend money on crap made by child laborers. You can hear her rant about her muse (aka husband) and other things that have no bearing on your life, in this space each Sunday.
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