Alone?
So I’m not brave enough to post a comment on her blog (although that might increase my traffic!), but I feel the need to confess in response to Amy the Humble‘s recent post on alone time, ending with this picturesque paragraph:
But now, it is time for me to head home. I can’t wait. My little ones have fat cheeks, and I am lost without them. My older ones have jokes and pranks and science experiments with too many parts. I hear the insect exhibit has expanded and that the two-year-old commissioned to find the specimens stopped eating them. I was made for this life. Some things go together—like me and them.
So I read with curiosity most of the 48 comments that were there this afternoon (not all of them were related to the post) and was stunned that in every single one of the comments that were related, moms gushed about how much they miss their kids after being gone for even 2 hours.
So, I guess I’ll be the first to raise my hand in dissent and say, “I enjoy my children and I love my job, and I don’t miss them when I get out by myself (which is fairly frequent; I have a good husband) — no, not even when I went for 2 nights to the Women’s Retreat — and I don’t feel guilty about it, either.”
I was not in a rush to get home from the retreat, and when I did the boys did not run to me as if I had been gone for ages. If you’d seen their response you would have thought I’d only been gone for an hour. I was happy to see them again and love welled up within me upon returning home and seeing my family again, but I thoroughly enjoyed every moment away, as well, even every lingering bite of Sunday lunch in Spokane before the drive home.
So there.
Two Hours???? Hmmm, I think I need to go and read this post you are referring to. That’s hardly enough time to decompress when you have a two year old. It would take me three days to start missing my girls when they were young. HOWEVER!!! A big caveat here….when they were nursing infants it was painful, emotionally AND physically to be gone for more than three HOURS!!! LOL!!! I think there is something about the fact that dad can watch the kids just fine when they are mobile and “feeding” themselves. It seemed to free up my emotions considerably.
Yes, that is true. I have only left Ilse once with Daddy for a quick errand and that was uncomfortable. There are too many hormones going around when you have a newborn…I have to randomly check that she’s breathing even when I’m wearing her in the Bjorn. :)
On the post, Amy had the whole day away from her crew of 6; the two hours thing was from her commenters.
And I will say that Ilse and I went out at about 4 last Saturday with my book group reading assignment to do and when I came back I missed bedtime by only a couple minutes. After being gone for 3 hours — really gone, since my brain had been in critical-reading, no-Mommy-thoughts land — I regretted missing bedtime and went in and gave them goodnight hugs and had that same “me and them, I’m made for this life” sort of moment. But bedtime after a long day at home is generally more like the last hurdle of the day. So, I think it was BECAUSE I was away that I was able to see a little more clearly how much I love them.
That is perhaps what Amy meant in her post, too, but her commenters took it a more sappy direction, I thought. :)
sappy is a good word for it. Or unrealistic?
I know of moms that hardly ever get out by themselves. They must be made of a different constitution than I am because I NEED time to myself more often than not. I can really tell if it has been too long. My older two stay the night with grandma once in a while and while I am always excited to see them, I enjoy the time apart. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and whatnot!
Oooh, I just noticed on your sidebar that you have the book, “Christian Modesty and the Public Undressing of America.” I just finished it recently and thought it was really good! I have wanted to do a post about it, but like every other topic I am passionate about, I know it will cause some derision. Sigh.