Today my husband and youngest daughter are set to return home from an overnight stay in the redwoods for Outdoor Education.
That means that today is also the end of, what I like to think of as,
my Annual Personal Staycation.
From the time my husband went along on my older girls’ class trip to the old Russian fort on the coast several years ago, I realized the grand opportunity offered to me if I signed him up to chaperone things I didn’t go to.
In my mind, if I have to always be the one to do things like be up in the night nursing kids’ flus, and I am always on duty for filling out any forms, always the one cooking and cleaning up dinner, the least he could do was go dangle from a zip-line with middle schoolers through the redwoods for a few days on a campout out by the ocean.
The first year I signed him up came with the added perk of him being required to spend the weekend in costume.
The pictures that came through from the school of him in a knee-length dress with a fur hat on hand-milling things felt pretty rewarding from my vantage point of a candle lit bathtub.
I have to admit that those few days of me not having to make up someone’s plate or listen to basketball shoes squeak on the TV became…a little addictive.
So, when my youngest daughter’s fifth grade class announced a three day trip to the California coast to hike and learn about nature, I signed him up so fast that my pen was almost smoking.
It would be “a perfect way for him to bond with our daughter,” I pitched.
After all, a little fresh air never hurt anyone.
I did wait until two days before the trip to read him all of the trip information.
That pesky little part about extreme night hikes, and possible rain-soaked climbs were parts I felt would land best coming from someone else right as he was about to do them.
My method of soothing his complaints over having to drive 7 middle schoolers three hours away to sleep in a tent was to swing a pendulum in front of his eyes back and forth and tell him he was going to enjoy it.
He never looked fully convinced, but I was able to imagine he did as he drove away further and further.
Mothers and wives need a break sometimes, you guys.
Sometimes we need to be alone with our thoughts and our feelings.
Sometimes we need to not be asked what’s for dinner, or to come check this weird lump.
Sometimes it feels good to have a break from being called on.
Once a year I have hope of such a break.
Once a year I get so excited by the opportunity to just sit and read a book, or paint, or write in the quiet that I sometimes sit there for an hour with a psycho looking grin, unable to choose where to start, completely frozen.
It just so happens that to get to this brief sabbatical I have to be at Back to School Night with my game face on.
While the other parents are listening for fundraiser info,
I come with my Husband Sign-Up Hand poised and ready.
This time around I signed him up so fast I had the teacher come stand behind me and ask me in a kind of halting voice if I “maybe…needed to…go home first…and ask him?”
Clearly this teacher was new to us.
She didn’t yet know the way that it goes around here.
I explained as I hard-dotted the “i” in his name,
“No. This is usually how we do it.”
This year’s trip was two days and one overnight and didn’t have nearly as much hiking.
I explained this to him as he looked at me with his eyelids at half-mast, by now onto me,
and I mentally climbed under a blanket, while soft music played and a candle flickered.
Never mind that my phone said rain was predicted the entire time.
*shoving his things in a bag*
This is love, and isn’t love sacrificial?
Last night, after only one text from him simply saying “It’s so cold,” I saw that the school had posted pictures.
I scrolled through them looking for any signs of life, and that is when I saw him sitting in the middle of a sea of middle school boys, having, what he later told me was a “Five Ravioli Max” dinner.
I zoomed in on his face and bit the sides of my cheeks trying not to smile.
I have to admit there is a *little* pleasure…
Another year on the books for both of us!
I’m sure he would say he can be cold just a little so that I can be well-rested.
I know that whoever took that photo probably thought he was just a dad chaperone simply smiling for the camera,
but I know that weird smile was meant for me,
and it definitely says,
“Enjoy your bubble bath, Babe, because look what you signed me up for.
I may never forgive you.”
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
