Where are You Right Now? and What are You Doing?

The Sprout household is wilting.  Pappa Sprout has been gone from home for most of the last month and a half.  Our leaves are drooping. He'll be back to visit on Monday, but my heart knows we won't really have him back until October.

Of all of us in the house, Little Sprout wears her sadness most publicly these days.  She cries and stomps and throws something across the room declaring, "I miss Daddy!"

"I know, honey.  We all do." I console.

Then when she gets her dad on the phone she consistently and predictably asks him, "Where are you right now?"

Every single time she talks to him she asks him where he is.  I want to ease the phone from her and tell her, no one really knows where he is right now.  The daddy you are missing won't be back for a while.

He has been in that "working" place, increasingly since April.  It's the place that deadens his smile and changes his posture.  With the approach of opening weekend, he has been pulled further and further from us, and Little Sprout knows it.  Saturday marks the opening of the Renaissance Festival, and although I know the difficult preparatory work will be done, I know too well that my husband's focused work will only barely fade after the last cannon fires. 

It's not that he doesn't want to be with us...or there for us...he does.  He just has so many responsibilities and demands that his emotional energy cannot be on us.  I'm seasoned.  We've navigated this ridiculous schedule for fourteen years, and even though the spiral is predictable, it doesn't mean I have to like it.  I can hardly expect the smaller sprouts in this house to like it either.

I don't ask him where he is, but I do ask, "What are you doing right now?" I try to conceal my increasing worry about his welfare. He does too much, in my opinion. His answers this week have been, "I'm moving hay bales." , "I'm raking sand.", "I'm shopping for food.", "I'm rebuilding a game.", "I'm scrubbing a fryer.", "I'm doing contracts in my office." "I'm running orientation.",  "I'm meeting with the fire inspectors."

"Did you eat lunch today?" I ask at 2:00 his time.  "How much sleep did you get?" I ask each morning because he sounds more and more tired each time he calls the kids before school.

The phone conversations have gotten shorter (three minutes tonight) because I hope he'll actually get more sleep and I don't really want to know the answers to my questions this time of year.  He's so tired, he'll barely remember whether I asked him or not.

I'm missing his side of the conversation.  So, I'll pretend he has time to ask me the burning questions, "Where are you?"  he  would ask. "Oh, I'm sitting at my computer," I would answer.  "What are You Doing?" he would wonder. "I'm missing my husband," I'd sadly reply.

REALLY?!? Phone Company to Blame for Divorce!!!!

I am not sure what appalls me more...the fact that a woman cheated on her husband OR the fact that she is suing the cell phone company for the fact that her marriage is done.

Toronto resident Gabriella Nagy is suing Rogers Wireless Inc. for $600,000

 Nagy claims her husband left her after seeing several phone calls to the same number, calling it and confirming her affair.  She blames the phone company for the break-up of her marriage.  Plus, she has the gall to think that someone owes her money for it.  Their marriage is done...officially...now that her husband knows of her affair, but her loyalty to their marriage was obviously over well before the cell phone bill mix up.

My approach to marriage is incredibly different than this woman's.  I don't want you to think that I am high and mighty and that I have never made terrible decisions when it comes to my marriage, but I have ALWAYS taken responsibility for my own behavior.  If, by some off chance, this woman wins her lawsuit, I hope her ex then civilly sues her for minimally half of the money she wins.  His argument would be that if they had not been together so that she could cheat on him, she would never have made any money from the cell phone bill mistake.  Real news never ceases to amaze me!

Appreciating the Wedding Tent

We opened our last wedding present this weekend. In August we will have been married for twelve years, and we finally got around to using one of the gifts.  The two-bedroom, six-person tent that we have lugged through eight moves, came out of its packaging on Saturday.  Big Sprout and Papa Sprout spent about forty-five minutes putting up the poles, setting in the stakes and prepping for a night of campfires and tent-talking.  Talk about delayed gratification! There was something so magical about sharing the initial use of this gift with our kids.

The tent was a present from a group of our college friends.  It was likely intended for our use as a newly-married couple, and they probably had no idea that we would be too scattered during the first part of our marriage to use it.  I can hardly believe that it has taken us twelve years to feel settled enough to set down those stakes, but we finally are.  The tent is now safely housed at our cabin, and I anticipate years of memories, but the tent stories will primarily belong to our children.

I think I've always known that this was going to be the way.  It never bothered me that we moved the tent box without opening it, because I knew we would, and I knew we would open it with our kids. 


It  makes me pause when our kids ask questions about our wedding.  It feels like they were there.  It's still strange to me that they weren't.  We talked this weekend that we should renew our vows at our twentieth anniversary, so that the kids can be a part of the celebration.  They have earned their time in our wedding tent.

It is so symbolic for me that we opened the tent on this particular weekend.  I had an epiphany of sorts about wedding miracles.  We went to a beautiful wedding on Friday, and the shift in my mentality was clear.  I used to cry watching the ceremonies because of what emotions I remembered from my own wedding, but the tears fell at this ceremony in remembrance of our wedding but also in anticipation of the weddings for our kids.  I was crying from the perspective of a mother, and I admittedly had  more tears.  Mothers have the emotional perspective of going through their own days, and the overwhelming reactions of letting go.

I am starting to understand the possible tension that happens with mothers and daughters and mothers-in law and daughters-in-law.  It is part of a chapter I've been formulating for the Choosing to Grow book, and it all came together for me this weekend. My understanding mimics the popping of the tent.  As a bride I saw weddings in one dimension, much like the flattened out version.  Through my research I realized that in order to fully appreciate the complexity of the full-family wedding experience there is some building that needs to be done first.  The husband and the wife each bring their own parts of the tent, and they are uniquely equipped with their own tools, handed down from families and established through experiences.  Recognizing the uniqueness of this union opens someone up to appreciation.  When the tent is completely assembled, it is a three-dimensional reality of wedding bliss, complete with past, present and future. I am beginning to look at weddings from the perspective of a previous bride, as a newlywed, and now as the mother of children who will eventually lay out their own wedding experience.  It is three-dimensional and I am grateful to have my 3-D glasses.

The mother of the bride commented as we were leaving the Friday wedding, "It is amazing to see the layering of their lives manifested here in one day."  It is most definitely layering that happens.  We are building the base layer for what our kids will take to their wedding tent, and there will be countless layers added in the years to come.  My greatest hope for them is that they can appreciate the three-dimensions of the wedding tent much earlier than twelve years after it happens....but it's really never too late to put up the tent, right?!?