Incommunicado

All right, this one is about mama.

When traveling for work, she tends to go incommunicado. She may be out west, down southeast, out east, mid-west, far off, wherever, as far as I am concerned she is long gone, and her absence makes my heart grow fonder.

My reliance upon her periodic (daily) communicative updates, be them reminders (I will be home late because…), lunch reviews (this PBJ needs more J) or even gossip (you should see her hair!) are as mortar to brick. It becomes clearly apparent this mortar is missing while she is away on business. The wall doesn't come crashing down but it doesn't feel as rigid either.

And this house of boys doesn’t sleep well when she is not home.  ;(

However, the entire purpose of her traveling is to attend meetings and work gatherings, stuff that can’t be interrupted even if it were close by. So we deal with it. We don’t mind her traveling. We can handle it. It's covered.

Back at home, we schedule out simple meals (as my barber says "breakfast - you can always make them breakfast for dinner"), coordinate sitters through our custom network of friends and family, if necessary. Get a bit more creative with the boys outfits (there you go, yellow shirt, blue pants - makes for green socks...).

We check-in over the phone every evening she is out. The conversations aren’t as lively as they used to be, we know each other fairly well by now. In between lines of placid conversation we listen to each other breathe to determine how our days really went.

Often the voices are tired:

<Early morning flights, jet lag, stressful meetings, uncomfortable beds><busy boys, cleaning house, running noses, 3:1 ratio, the warm lump that I sleep next to is elsewhere>

In today’s world, as we stretch ourselves out – communication is one of those things that gets kinda thin ... and the mobile phone seems a bit of a necessity.