I miss my lady. It's true, I'm man enough to admit it. What, I'm supposed to admit it? OK, then perhaps I'm not devoid of emotion after all. Wait, what, this was supposed to happen sooner than seven days in? It seems I can't win, even if the argument is only with myself.
It's been a long time since Ann and I spent this amount of time apart. I can think of when I was in China several years ago, but in that case I was the one traveling and often distracted. Before that...wow, back in college while we were still dating and she spent the summer in Japan? In that case, my emotions hadn't calcified yet, rather that hadn't even yet matured. If I remember correctly, I was kind of a baby about the whole ordeal. Ah, the 20 year old me. (My notoriously bad memory is likely leaving out three or four other situations that likely debunk this whole post)
Anyway, it's been a while since it's been a while. Last night, I sat down thinking about what to write and after a few minutes simply decided there really wasn't much to say. Even with Ann gone, it was kind of an ordinary Sunday. And you don't want to hear me yammer on about whatever the kids were doing or about my aching body. It's just not that interesting.
But today I had that first real strong tinge of missing Ann. I joked about it earlier, but it is a curious thing that it happened seven days in. Honestly, I can't decide if that's too long, about right or irrelevant unless we're talking weeks. I mean I got nothing on the military spouses. Regardless, the feeling wasn't anything in particular, rather it was about everything. It was simply about her not being here.
I discovered early on in her trip that this wasn't going to be the trips of yore where watching the kids got tiresome quickly and you wanted the other person back just to help out and give you a break. Its tough to tag-team when your corner is empty. But now the kids are older and aren't as needy, at least in the physical sense. And frankly, given no option but to help themselves, they tend to help themselves. So instead, here I am, here to make sure they get fed, don't melt their brains by staring at the screen too long and otherwise make decisions on where they can and can't go. Wow, nearly 9 and 13 and that's what its come to. What'll I have to provide when they're 14 and 18!?! Keys to the car, I suppose.
I don't know that I'm unique in this feeling. Ask Evan, and I think he just misses his mom. Cailin? We'll I'm sure I'm cramping her style, so she's probably missing her enabler. But hey, at least no one argues about who gets to sit next to mom at dinner.
None of this should take away from the fact that Ann's off doing something really cool, and shouldn't have to think twice about being gone for 10 days. That's nothing compared to the memories and experiences she taking in. But these are interesting times; you're given the chance to step back and appreciate things we sometimes take for granted. Whether it's love, marriage or just companionship, I think that given long enough they become foundational. Super important, not forgotten, but just there. I don't know, I kind of feel like Homer Simpson writing that... "Marge, I need you!" I'm mean, what do you say next, "I now appreciate our marriage more after you left for 10 days"? Well, Homer only lasted a day, so at least I've got that going for me.
Well, I'm going to go with the simplicity here. I'm going to embrace the simplicity of the feeling and say that I miss the embrace, the closeness and just feeling one another.
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