Man Up
I lie.
I lie.
I lie.
Call after call. Colleague after colleague asks. How is it going?
"Fine", I say.
"Well."
"We've worked it out."
There is really no other answer. Mothers work. Face it, mo-wo! To mention my longing for them is beyond pointless. Preaching to the choir. I think I won't mention for fear of the commiseration. To have the truly commonplace nature of my agony be borne full force back upon me.
It is a very demanding time right now and our times together seem criminally brief.
I miss them so much.
And, I lie about it over and over and over.
Tomorrow maybe I just won't answer the phone.
I lie.
I lie.
Call after call. Colleague after colleague asks. How is it going?
"Fine", I say.
"Well."
"We've worked it out."
There is really no other answer. Mothers work. Face it, mo-wo! To mention my longing for them is beyond pointless. Preaching to the choir. I think I won't mention for fear of the commiseration. To have the truly commonplace nature of my agony be borne full force back upon me.
It is a very demanding time right now and our times together seem criminally brief.
I miss them so much.
And, I lie about it over and over and over.
Tomorrow maybe I just won't answer the phone.
Labels: the work experiment
posted by mo-wo at 8:18 p.m.
3 Comments:
I've been starring at the keyboard (which btw is very very dirty -- no wonder I can't shake this cold), and wondering what, if anything, I can offer you. And all I can think is to tell you that I hear/read your pain and I hope you find your peace.
Seriously? I could not work full-time. It would kill my soul. I cannot say how grateful I am that I have the luxury of leaving her for only 6 hours a day, 5 days a week.
How do fathers do it?
When I went back to work fulltime, and left a not-quite-4 year old and a 2-year old in a public daycare center in a foreign country in which they did not speak the language of their caregivers, I studied all the dads at work for survival clues.
My conclusion: they missed their kids just as much as I missed mine, but somehow they developed coping skills. Some of them looked at photos a lot, others made lots of phone calls -- they figured it out. I figured, they did it, so could I.
And we all enjoyed the precious time we were able to spend with our families.
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