Parenthood through the eyes of the Heartless Bitch
July 9, 2008 | Filed Under Lifestyles of the Heartlessly Bitchy, Parenting | 1 Comment
I’ve been bluesfesting this week (as you may have seen from previous posts), and while there, I ran into a former co-worker and we spent a little time catching up. She’s on her 11 boss in 7 years with the same company (they go through VP’s of Marketing like so much used kleenex), but she was taking the week off to enjoy the festival. It’s something she and her husband do each year – they take the whole week off, play with the kids during the day (they have two pre-teen kids) and then go to the festival at night with full VIP passes. She said that last year she realized that for the cost of the babysitters at night (and most of the day on the weekends), it would be cheaper to send the kids off to camp. Her daughter was all for it last summer, but she had to work on her son. Through the course of the year she got him going to cubscout camps on weekends, and used to spending time away. By this summer, they were both finally ready to spend a week away from home. She and her husband loaded the kids on the bus that morning, and as it departed, her husband looked at her and said, “Well, that’s it. We are child-free for a week!”… and she burst into tears.
I said, “Aw honey, save the tears! You have a week of grown-up time after nearly a decade of mommy-dom. Revel in it! The time to REALLY cry is when they move back in at the age of 20, “to go to school”, eat you out of house and home, hog the TV, don’t get up until 2pm in the afternoon, and leave their smelly socks everywhere.” THEN you cry.
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Amen sista. The first time my son left for a summer at his dad’s, I cried. The second time around, I wept, a little. Now I’m over it and look forward to my summers. I have summer visitation but it is nice to have some me/adult time. I think it is ok and HEALTHY for both parents and kids to take a break/establish independence.
A close friend has a kid that just keeps coming back. The dude just can’t stay gone. I think the last paragraph of your blog aptly describes what she is going through. And yes, a reason to shed some horse-turd tears. :o(