Bloody Milestones

Due to the location of our respective places of employment, Allan and I have lived apart the whole duration of our marriage. We are a weekend-and-holidays-only couple and most of what that implies. It is what it is. And, for the moment, we are obligated to this existence … a story for another day, maybe. Thankfully, though, we have finally come to a place of acceptance. Well, that’s not entirely true. Allan’s at that place. I, on the other hand, have accepted it in the same way that I have accepted I’m as fertile as the soil along the banks of the river Nile and therefore MUST love and embrace the way in which I bleed four or five days out of every month. MUST! In other words, FINE. JUST FINE. I ACCEPT. But I WHOLLY reserve my right to bitch and whine about it… while slamming the phone against the wall because static has cut into my conversation with you right when I’m at the apex of the most endearing tale of how Emma was offering a shoulder for Kyra to cry upon because Mommy yanked a mammoth-sized screwdriver from her forceful grasp!

Actually, I’ve come a long way. There was a time when slamming a phone against the wall was entirely too strenuous an activity to undertake. Talking on the phone was just as taxing. But, truth be told, I don’t believe Allan is completely accepting of the circumstances, either. What exactly does that mean, anyway? Accepting. Happily resigned? No longer sad? Having bonfire celebrations in commemoration of the faux bachelor life? If so, then that’s not Allan. The important difference between our attitudes is that he handles the stress of our separation like the adult that he is. And, by the way, I hate to use the word “separation.” It conjures up images of a couple that’s one restraining order away from divorce. We are separated by circumstance. But I digress. Allan doesn’t have the occasional “I can’t do this anymore!” fit like I do. He doesn’t fall into an obvious-to-the-naked-eye depression. He doesn’t buy ice cream by the truckload. He doesn’t hide from neighbors and co-workers alike for fear of breaking down at the innocent question of “Hey, how’s the family?” True, he’s not a female with the occasional raging hormones. And he doesn’t have to deal with being the single parent to four kids. But that last one is the EXACT excuse I’d be using to justify recurring meltdowns. Allan is without the family right now.

It wasn’t always so.

When Emma, and later Kyra, were born, we decided that they would live with him once I exhausted all of my maternity leave. By the way, that would be two hundred miles north of here. Day care options were limited in my town, and the bottom line is that he is just as competent a human being as I am. On second thought, no, he is WAY MORE competent. Besides, these were my third and fourth children. Emma and Kyra were his first and second. I wanted him to experience the elation, the trials, the tribulations, and the bonding phenomenon that occur with a new baby. And so, once my maternity leave was over, they and their diaper bags were loaded into the car and moved north. I went up every other weekend and, like the way we witness children grow in movies, I saw them changing in what seemed like over-dynamic spurts for the first 22 months of Emma’s life, and the first 10 months of Kyra’s, until Allan and I made the decision to move them back with me in February.

But before that happened, I was the designated traveler. (Anyone who has tried traveling four hours through several winding mountain passes with two very small children knows why.) As such, I could never get there fast enough. And sometimes I thought that dying surely had to be less painful than starting up my car and driving away from my two small babies. It was heart-wrenching. And I couldn’t hide it. Or maybe I just wouldn’t. My melancholy would begin on Sunday morning before I’d even gotten out of bed. By the time I was putting my coat on to leave at noon, my misery was more than palpable. I cried the ugly cry all the way back home. I cursed God and RVs and the wildlife that forced me to pay attention to the road when all I wanted to do was space out until I got to my other two children.

I know there were times when Allan didn’t even want to tell me that one of the babies had reached a new milestone. “Emma is putting her toes in her mouth now,” he’d say, wincing in preparation for my screams at the injustice of it all. “Maybe I shouldn’t talk about this stuff if it’s only gonna make you sad,” he’d say. But I didn’t want that either! And, God forbid they got sick. At the mere sound of a cough, I was concocting ways to get there. They needed me! My paranoid mind started thinking he was keeping it too cool in their room. Maybe he wasn’t dressing them warmly enough. What if he slept through the whole night without waking while they were crying out in pain? What if they suffocated on snot?? If I had driven myself crazy, that would be one thing. But I drove him crazy right along with me. He’d recurrently ask me to search for a local day care so that they could come back home with me. And I would refuse. Because I knew that my reasons were irrational. My only sane justification for taking them home with me was so that my older children could get to know them. Not because Allan was a bad parent. Or because I was a better one. And, while I thought it was important for the babies to become acquainted with their siblings, I thought it was more important that the babies be acquainted with their father. And vice versa.

Eventually, I got a semi-grip and quit giving him so much non-point guilt… right before we decided once and for all that it was my turn.

By appearances, packing up their belongings and bringing them back was harder on me than it was on him. But I’ve learned not to trust the way that things appear. After all, Jerry Springer doesn’t look like the kind of man who would host a TV show that promotes two brothers fist-fighting over their cheating first cousin. Even now, six months later, I know that Emma and Kyra’s presence is still sorely missed. It’s told in the hour at which I’ll receive an email from Allan. Or the amount of sick leave he’s taken since their departure. But he goes out of his way to not do to me what I did to him. God knows he wanted me there to see Emma putting her toes into her mouth just as much as I wanted to be there to see it. But he tried to draw happiness from the experience, anyway. It was a new experience, after all. It was one of Emma’s milestones! And I bled my sadness all over it.

I’m calling Emma officially potty-trained now. She hasn’t had an accident in three days. And, over the weekend, her speech seemed to evolve exponentially. Even the day care ladies made mention of how much she seemed to advance, phonetically-speaking, over the weekend. And Allan had to hear about all of this via phone. He didn’t heave big, heavy sighs when I told him. Or cry. Or curse the heavens. Or even complain in the form of pensive silence. Instead, he congratulated me on a job well done. And told me how much he looks forward to coming home. There wasn’t even a papercut-sized bleed of selfishness on me or Emma’s milestone. Which, guess what, evoked feelings of guilt. But Allan tries his DAMNDEST to be positive, and it’s all I can do to not go out and get a triple E-cup boob job for him to show my appreciation. Who knows, maybe there’s a Ben and Jerry’s truck parked outside his door at this very moment. (Which everyone knows is a close second to big boobs.) For his sake, I hope so. But I’ll never hear about it.