One evening Herself was Skyping one of her sisters that lives in China, and her sister mentions that she would like to return to the country that she lived in whilst in the Peace Corps, the
Republic of Georgia. She wanted to do this in order to re-acquaint herself with her friends that she had made and her host family that she stayed with. Apparently she had developed really good relationships with folks there. She was lamenting that she didn't want to make the trip by herself but she couldn't find anyone that would catch the vision enough to commit to going with her. She was saying all this as I came into the room, and I surprised everybody (myself included) by saying "Wifey will go with you!" This is another classic case of my impulsiveness...
After much discussion, (of course) all the details get hammered out and it is decided when they are going, it still seems all very far away and unimportant. As the date gets closer, Herself starts compulsively making lists to help her keep track of everything that wants done before she leaves. :)
Then on the evening of the big day, she asks me where her passport is. I realize that it is locked up in the Safety Deposit Box in the vault of our bank! We were going to leave at 8:30 in the morning the next day, and the bank doesn't open until 9:00. I texted my banker that evening and he was gracious enough to sneak me in a side door and give me access to the vault prior to the bank opening early that next morning, with plenty enough time to spare.
After that big 'ol airplane swallowed up our Beloved Mama, we went home, the kids were quite energized by the thought of fending for themselves and taking care of Silly, Helpless Daddy. I came home that evening to a wonderful meal of spaghetti and my favorite home made cookies; peanut butter! It was awesome! From there, however, things just sort of unraveled. Nothing traumatic or anything like that, it just became VERY apparent (really quickly) that there needed to be a full time person in my home taking care of things the way She does, to maintain normalcy. And we didn't...
The first obvious example is wal-mart... I decided to go shopping for groceries. Now ordinarily, I avoid this place like the Ebola Virus, but one "Mustn't Grumble", so I trudged off to the my least of favorite stores. (It may as well had a sign that stated: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here". Anyway, I spent an HOUR AND A HALF looking for my list of 15 grocery items!!! An hour and a half!!! I realized that I knew where NOTHING was! Now, I'm not suggesting that all I came home with was 15 items, noooo, in fact it cost me well over 200.00 dollars, but it took me that long to find the items on my list. I was really frustrated by the time that I was done, but I was so proud of myself for sticking it through and getting my stuff. And not killing anybody or yelling at anyone in the meantime...
But sticking with the theme that things were different around the house without Mama, I quickly realized that there was a lot of stuff that happened around the house that I didn't (couldn't) care about. One thing I realized quite quickly was this: How do single moms that work full time do it?!? My work is very flexible,
and I have very competent staff to get stuff done in my absence, so I took a lot of time off; going in late and coming home early,
and I have my in-laws living right next door to help with child care, running to the library, etc,
and all my kids have been doing their own laundry (and mine) for quite some time now,
and I didn't hardly ever have to cook, and it was still nonstop chaos.
So, what are you going to do when your hospitable Wifey is gone over the 4th of July, and you have a
bunch of family around (from both sides), and that family has friends with large families from out of state around, what are you going to do? I'll tell you; you host a Fourth of July Party without caring how well it is executed, that's what you do. And you invite literally anyone who wants to come. There was more than 50 people there, including some of them that I'd never met before, and most looked like they were having fun.
It was unseasonably cool most of the time that Herself was gone, which was nice with the extra traffic of Roper kids going in and out; I wore out a few flyswatters, though. But we finally developed a gait of unsteady rhythm; mostly winging it, with all the extra company, unregulated bedtime hours, sporadic meal times, we lived in Splendid Squalor, without any sort of schedule. For the first time in my children's life, they lived in unchecked chaos; it was fun at first, but they were Sooo ready for Herself to come back and restore order in our lives. As was I.
As for myself; I was nearly a basket-case from the beginning, but as the days wore on my resolve to "stay calm and carry on" was wearing pretty thin. I found myself pretty irritable and lonely, and towards the end, even depressed (very unusual for me) for lack of Mama. Overall, I'm so glad she went, I'm delighted for her to have this experience to travel to another country, because I'm not at a point in my life where I'm willing to take 16 days off and go do that sort of thing, and I know she has a strong desire to do such things, but I can't really see the circumstances that it will ever happen like this again... Here are a few pictures of the fun Mama was having without us:
Above: The Black Sea
