A common theme in our marriage is me consistently asking for Time Alone, A Break, something resembling something different than the norm.
Sometimes it is simply a chance to sit in the bath tub and read a book undisturbed for a half of an hour, even a trip to the grocery store on a weekend without the Kid attached. A big request is generally, “I want a weekend to myself – to go somewhere without anyone waking me up, requiring things of me.”
On our trip, this subject came to a head because, well, it wasn’t really a ‘vacation’ for me. It was a ‘family trip’ and it was me being the Taking Care Of person in four different hotels, in four strange cities. I woke up with an aching back and neck, sore from sleeping on the shitty sleeper sofas in the various hotels and generally put out for being on the go, I felt, all. the. time.
My husband kept saying how ‘relaxed’ he felt, how ‘rested’. He’d read three different books on the trip. I barely got through half of one. Hardly seems fair.
When the subject of taking time off for myself comes up, it’s a hard one to fight for and I’ll try to explain why:
My husband is a surgeon. He’s on-call and my schedule, a lot of the time, depends on what his schedule is.
For example: If I pick a weekend in September, say, way back in May … and ask him to see if he could take that weekend, it doesn’t always work. He has a few other partners in the group with their own family responsibilities and work obligations to account for. My husband travels a lot for his job, too, so when he’s gone for a meeting, it means he makes up call when he gets back.
If he’s on-call for a weekend, sometimes he gets called in – sometimes he doesn’t. It all depends. If I wanted to leave for a weekend, I couldn’t leave if he’s walking around with the pager attached. If he gets called in at 3 a.m., who is there to call?
The schedule isn’t made out, really, that far in advance – generally a month or so before. You are at the mercy for four people, and your own who doesn’t always advocate for the weekend you wanted.
When your friends want to know if you’re free, they are affected, too. Everyone is in a holding pattern.
And I don’t ask for much.
In the (almost) ten years we’ve been together, I have taken four weekends to myself: I went to the Bahamas with Fyrchk, to DC a few years ago, to Vail this past February with girlfriends. Crap. Just three?? AAAAH!
And it’s not for lack of asking, or trying to work something into the mix.
In our ‘conversation’, it occurred to me that in my situation, I am the only spouse in the group to not be working full-time outside the home. So when weekend off requests come up and someone needs something, I lose out because, well, “She’s a stay-at-home mom, and what does she need that for?” . If you choose to stay home, you get dumped on and the assumption is you don’t require mental health days.
And I think staying at home is more than enough reason to want to get away.
While we were hashing this out, HDH suggested I get a part-time job just for ’some adult interaction’. And of course, the underlying tone was, “then they’ll take you seriously’. No thanks. Right now, I’m a room mom, a substitute teacher, helping out with the parent association and on a board for a non-profit.
(And that TOTALLY offends me, by the way. Someday, I hope, people will take staying home seriously)
It’s the eternal struggle: If I get a job, will HDH be willing to change his schedule to pick up our son or drop him off at school? What if Bug gets sick? The answer is really a resounding ‘No’, so … I’ll be the one juggling that mess, too.
(And for what it’s worth, my hat is off to those of you who work full-time and still kick ass with the kid stuff!)
My solution has been to contact the spouses in the section and find out what vacations they have coming up, or what weekends they foresee needing, and trying to plan ahead around this and what I know of my own husband’s schedule.
And, after reading the email he sent detailing what weekends he’ll be gone and what weekends he’ll be making up for, my next shot would be February.
Yay?
I hope there’s respite soon. Like, before February. I would love a chance to have peace and quiet, sit and think, sleep in, sleep well, and recharge. It’s been too long.
Random Comment During The “Conversation” : “You should have married a teacher, then”.
