Adjustments
Tuesday morning we all woke at 5am, packed the car in the frigid, windy, black morning, and joined the commuter stream south on 94. My wife and daughter were leaving twelve days ahead of me to visit my in-laws in Japan.For weeks, I had been dreading this day. My eyes would well up when I thought about it.
I was convinced (still am) that my daughter will forget me. When I see her again, I know she will cry. I'll be a stranger. All we've been through, all the moments we shared, ...they were just for my benefit. She will never remember them. And she won't remember me after twelve days away.
For weeks this knowledge has killed me. I felt that I would cease to be father for the twelve days that I was not there. I imagined how it would sting when the thing I loved most in this world would not know me. Knowing this, it would hurt to say goodbye.
I instructed my wife to not spend a lot of time saying goodbye to me at the airport. I told her to make it quick and leave right away. Otherwise, it would be too difficult and I would never keep it together.
At the airport everything went as planned, though I did not cry. I partitioned the sadness, focused on the day ahead, and soldiered on.
Day one was not bad until I returned home that evening. Normally I make the long walk from the garage to the house with a sense of comfort. The kitchen lights are on, dinner is already being cooked, the house is warm and alive and 5 million miles away from my cubicle and desktop of stress. But that night the house was completely dark and silent. A cold void to match the night. Dormant.
And I realized that this is exactly how I finished nearly every day of my life as a single adult. And I knew I could never handle being single again. Well, perhaps I could, ...but never would I want to. I also realised that I missed my wife more than I could have (or did) imagine. It's not much of a life without her.
Atheletes talk about "taking it day-by-day", and that usually just sounds like boilerplate schtick, ..but it works. When you need to navigate a difficult time, don't focus on the big picture or the big questions or the big known problems. Just do your job, think smaller, complete your tasks and move along.
It is day three and I am nearly fret free. Nearly ...
See, ...it's 2am and for the third night in a row I'm hesitant to go to bed. I'm tired, I need to get up early for work, and I have no real reason to stay up. It's peculiar, but something is causing me to avoid going to bed.
I've toyed with lot's of interesting psychological theories about this, ...but I'm not interesting enough for those. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the truth is this.
I'm a serious creature of habit, almost to the point of compulsion. A routine is a comfort zone. It keeps me sane-ish, ...so I am devout in my rituals. Friends know that I have tendancy to repeat the same thing over and over again. I will listen to the same CD 10-15 times in row night after night. I will watch the same show, in the same place, at the same time night after night after night. With the wife gone, I cannot follow the same routine. If I tried, it would be like listening to a song you know over and over, but one note in the song is continuously off.
I miss her, and I miss my life as it was three days ago and should always be.
But in three-and-a-half more days I'll be on a plane to San Diego, staying at a resort for a week while we waste a lot of time on the company dime, ..then it's off to Japan where I dine at Iron Chef Hiroyuki Sakai's restaurant, visit the Sony HQ and play all their new video games before they are released, ...and of course, see my wife and daughter again.
I've avoided it long enough, ...off to bed.
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