Gone Again

Eric’s in Kentucky until Friday. Boy, does this wear on a family.

GABE (despite our reassurances): “Daddy’s moving far, far away!”
SAM: “Don’t even talk about Daddy! It makes me feel like I’m going to cry!”
ME: “Where’s that egg nog?” Ahem.

After this, he goes away again on freaking New Year’s Day for five days. Theoretically, then, no more travel “for a while,” but he keeps inserting unsettling things like “…but maybe one or two overnights here and there, and there might be a training class I should go attend…”

When I refer to myself as a “single mom” in times like this, I realize of course that in no way does my situation come close to approximating a real single parent’s. I’m lucky in that even though I’m providing the kid care from sun-up to, well, sun-up all by myself with no assistance, I’m doing it from my own home without any worries about how the bills will be paid or whether I can find affordable day care that will let me handle that. If the kids start puking (please, God, no), it’s worth whining about, but it’s not a catastrophe that could cost me a job when I have to stay home and tend to them. I know and appreciate how good I really have it.

In moments like this, though, it’s hard to keep that sense of gratitude. The boys keep flip-flopping between post-Christmas mania and emo-child moodiness for their missing father. They’ll stay that way, too, almost until Eric returns…at which point they’ll start flip-flopping between “Daddy’s back” mania and “how dare he have left, anyway?!” moodiness. This, naturally, will last right up until the eve of his next trip, and the cycle continues.

I want to tear down the tree already, pack it away and try to normalize the areas of our lives over which I have some control. To heck with waiting until Epiphany.

(This probably would have been a more pleasant entry had I written it a few hours ago, when I was still feeling pretty good. Got a new stovetop espresso maker and a frothing wand at a kitchen store closeout sale, along with some Ghirardelli coffee beans, and I was happy about getting to try them all out. Nuts to all that, now.)