Absent Presence

The girl child and I have no secrets. Really. I know you won’t believe me when I say that. You think I'm being naive. How is it that a 15-year-old girl would tell her mother everything? I can hear you. You're laughing at me, but it's true. She tells me stuff that, sometimes, I really don’t want to know. I've caught myself saying things like, "Are you sure you want to tell this to your mother?" To which she replies, "Why not, it's not so bad. It's not like I'm blah blah blah blah . . ." That's when I kind of mentally hold my ears and sing “la la la” in my head because I'm really sure I don't want to know what the blah blah blah is all about that she could be doing. But I let her talk. I do this because if she begins to censor herself, I’m terrified that she will stop telling me the things that I love to hear. I’m not around that much. I want to know it all.

I spend a lot of my time trying to figure out how to be present in a life in which I’m typically absent. Balance doesn’t come easily to me. At work, it’s: “That big author is coming in on Thursday afternoon at 4:30 so why don’t you come by and join us for a little toast in celebration of his new book?” So I’m thinking, hell yeah, would love to, but you know I leave at 4:00 but I’d really like to meet this guy and I guess I could take a later bus but that would mean that I won’t get home until about 7:30-8:00 because there will be traffic by then and then the family will wait for me to eat dinner because that’s what they do and the girl child has a vocab test and the boy child has a paper due and I really wanted to take the boy child to his dance class at 7:00 because that’s when we get a little alone time in the car to talk. I have to think fast. But I can’t really say what I’m thinking, can I? No, not really. So, I weigh my options. And then I head home. If I don’t, I will only have a couple of waking hours with my family that day.

I am physically absent as a parent. On a regular day I leave the house at 5:30 a.m and I don’t get home until almost 6:30 p.m. I try to get to bed before 10:00 so I can do it all over again the next day without falling over. Contact with the kids during the week consists of phone calls in the morning, phone calls when they get home from school, and texts from the bus. I spend my few hours before bedtime watching the TV shows that they like so I can sit with them. I have a love/hate relationship with Abby Lee. Obviously, I don’t get out much. I keep up with their schoolwork and check their grades. When something goes wrong at school, I am the Momminator. Don’t mess with me.

As for the rest of the family, I am absent from my marriage more physically and emotionally than I am with the kids. In a few years they will be off to college and I expect I’ll have more of a chance to reconnect with my husband then. I’m hoping that I’m right. I am absent as a daughter, thinking that another Friday night has gone by without a dinner with Mommy like we used to have before I began commuting, and knowing that I won’t be able to make up for that. Ever. You know, I tell her everything, and she generally tells me what she ate that day. Sometimes, when she tells me she’s not feeling well I want to put my hands over my ears and sing “la la la.” I’m terrified that she will stop telling me the things that I need to hear. I’m not around that much. I want to know it all.