My Overwhelming Urge for Solitaire

I’m back after a four-day hiatus from being a mom, wife, house straightener, list maker, drill sergeant, lunch crafter, school folder organizer, jungle gym, laundress, human-size Kleenex, and general miss fix-it.

This is me, in front of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset. It was glorious – both the sunset and the break.

In this picture and during my trip in general, this is how much I missed my children:

zip, zero, not all all.

Which might make me a bad mother in the eyes of some, but which actually just tells me that I needed a break. Big time.

This was the longest I have been away from my family with time to myself and nearly zero obligation to anyone else in six years.

Six freaking years. Four days.

I reconnected with the part of myself that likes to travel, that picked up my life when I was 26 and moved to an unknown place with the Peace Corps. The part of me that loves quiet and non-action. The part of me that puts stuff down on a surface and returns to find it untouched one hour later!

But this reconnection didn’t come until about hour 28 of my 96-hour sojourn.

Despite my pre-trip giddiness (see previous post), I boarded the plane and proceeded to have a near panic-attack. I felt more anxious than I have in a while and spent the duration of the flight obsessively playing solitaire, eating packages of stale pretzels, and annoying my seat mates with trips to the bathroom

I called Jon when I landed.

“You have Stockholm Syndrome,” he said.

“Come again?” I asked.

“Yeah, these little terrorists of ours have you believing you need to stay here, captive forever. You’re allowed to break free. Go. Run!”

I love my husband.

Now, I am someone who is very clear about what I need in terms of work/mother/life ratio. I work from home, but not full time in the classic sense: I have created a life that allows me the flexibility to work as much as I want to as I create a business.

And I park my kids in full-time care without a shred of guilt.

I routinely take time to have one-on-one dates with the kids, ride my bike to the beach mid-day, catch up on Bravo, and nap. Lots and lots of napping.

I do this because I firmly believe that, as a parent/mother, you could quit your job, put your kid(s) in full-time care, have every day to yourself to take care of personal business and relax, and STILL be exhausted. Absolutely.

Parenting is HARD. And modern parenting is nearly impossible.

Given these feelings/choices of mine, I was shocked that I had such a hard time adjusting. I was surprised there were parts of myself that I had truly forgotten.

Yesterday morning, as I was preparing my bags, I cried.

I miss quiet. I miss people leaving me alone. I miss my mind when it is still and even.

There is nothing to do about this but say it, realize it, not shame ourselves for it. I wouldn’t trade my life. I love my family, my husband, and being a mom.

But I keep wondering whether, as parents in this nutso world of ours, we are giving too much to our children and not leaving enough for ourselves.

So much of my daily mental space – which would otherwise be basking in calm – is filled by fear of bad things happening to my children. A near constant list of things that could go wrong. For this, I blame sleep deprivation, my own time in therapy and as a therapist (both useful, but we must set limits on believing we can raise perfect individuals who never suffer), and Dateline NBC.

Add to this the fact that marriage is hard. It takes work. There are ups and downs to work through, just as with anything in life.

We can do these things. They won’t break us. But the thing about modern parenting is that we’re very often doing them alone, without support from family who live far away and not enough time with friends or a sense of community.

I know I am not the only one who feels this way.

You guys, it’s okay to love our kids and partners and want nothing to do with them at times. It’s okay to not miss them or give a shit about what they are doing when we’re not with them.

We have to feel free to say these things out loud. We have to, we have to, we have to.

Now, in the meantime, I’m thinking about running away to Hawaii. Who’s with me?