This past weekend I did something I've never done before.
I went away. By myself. Well, without the kids and BigDaddyFish.
One of my best friends, who I have known since 9th grade when her family moved to the DC area from a tiny town in western Pennsylvania, owns a cabin in a lake area in western Pennsylvania popular with vacationers. Hunters, anglers, outdoorsy people of all kinds go there.
Typically, her husband and his buddies go up there to "check" on the cabin. Which we all know is code for "drink ourselves silly and get thrown out of bars." It takes all of five minutes to "check" on the cabin, yet it always took him a whole weekend to do it. So one day, S asked her husband "When do I get to go check on the cabin?"
So this weekend, S and her twin sister S, their younger sister S, their mom, another friend of theirs, and I went to the cabin to "check" on it. Younger Sister S is pregnant, and because I am still breastfeeding I didn't want to drink, so she and I did the non-alcoholic pina coladas and margaritas, while the rest got a little warmer. We lit a big campfire, made mountain pies, and generally had a silly, crazy time. We talked, and talked, and talked. And we laughed. If it's true that you burn lots of calories laughing, then I may have lost weight this weekend, in spite of the mountain pies, because practically all we did was laugh. So hard we cried.
These are women who know me better than anyone else. Women who are like a mother and sisters to me. They, and their relationship, are my primary example of what I want my family to be like. I can totally and completely be myself with them without fear of judgment. I wish I could spend that kind of time with them more often, but with jobs, spouses, a total of nineteen kids among the six of us, and geographic distance that just isn't possible. We have promised each other we'll make this an annual thing.
It was wonderful. I had debated for about the whole last week whether or not I wanted to go. I was worried about how Nemo was going to do overnight without me, since he won't take a bottle. I worried about how BigDaddyFish would fare with all the kids by himself. I felt bad, because his birthday was Sunday and I wasn't going to be there for his birthday weekend (for the record, he told me he didn't mind if I went, and we typically don't do anything for his birthday, anyway, because he's a bit of a curmudgeon, and I was home before dinner). I am so glad I went. I didn't know the best was yet to come.
BigDaddyFish and the kids cleaned the entire living room while I was gone. Now, he had to call in the in-laws to help that get accomplished, but he isn't bothered by them like I am, so it worked out. His father's mother is staying with his parents right now, so she came and helped out, too. Trout had conspired with the in-laws to get a birthday cake for BigDaddyFish, so they had a little birthday celebration on Saturday night. At first I was a little jealous of this (okay, a lot jealous) because they had done it without me and no one had done anything for me on my birthday, but it didn't last long because clearly they had had a nice time, I didn't have to spend time being annoyed by them, AND they saved me a big piece of cake. With a purple flower.
Best of all, BigDaddyFish wrote me a five page letter, just talking about how he felt about the weekend and stuff. He ended up feeling bad that I was gone on his birthday and that surprised him. I did remind him that if he had said it would bother him I would have stayed home in a nanosecond, but he was glad I had gone. He thanked me for the gift of giving him time alone with the kids (I had to ask if he was being sarcastic about this, but he assured me he wasn't) - that he felt that way just made it more of a win-win situation. He said a bunch of other stuff, too, private things. It was lovely.
It touched me in a way that I hadn't thought possible. The only reason I mention it, mostly, is that it is an example of how important keeping the lines of communication open is to a marriage. That particular task gets harder and harder (to me, anyway) with each child you add to your family, because resources become spread thinner and thinner. Writing letters to one another can provide a different way to keep doing that. It lets you talk about issues that might be too emotionally charged to talk rationally about, particularly if you tend to get so emotional you can't think straight, not that I'd know anything about that (ahem).
Nemo did fine. He missed me, alright, and I missed him, more that I thought I would. The others? Well, I missed them, but I didn't MISS them - it was a welcome break from their particular type of chaos, but I missed the baby so much I ached. I pumped so much milk I didn't have room to bring it all home with me. He took formula from a cup while I was gone. BDF said that he woke up once in the night, did a visual check to make sure BDF was still there, then laid down and went back to sleep. He has slept through the night both nights since I've been home. Before I left, he had been getting up two times a night to nurse, so this is huge.
I'm sure glad to be home.
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