Time Out

There’s this mythical experience I’ve heard about, but I wasn’t quite sure it was real: The weekend away. Something like unicorns and cave trolls, while possible it’s real, it seemed unlikely that I would ever experience it. But now, huzzah, I know it exists. I’ve been there.

And it’s amazing.

For the first time since we’ve had two children, the wife and I went out of town. By ourselves. For a whole weekend. That's right. That happened. We visited Portland for a friend’s wedding. I’m not gonna lie. There was drinking. There was cavorting. There was karaoke sang. But there was also wandering aimlessly without a schedule and meals that could be savored, slowly consumed at leisure, as opposed to at the competitive speed of an Olympic event.

It’s weird the things you miss. Or that you don’t realize you miss until you re-experience them. Oh, this is what it’s like to actually taste my dinner. Or, This is what it’s like to walk down the street and not worry that the human you’re with is suddenly going to run out in front of a moving car. And, So this is what it’s like to stay up late and sleep in without being badgered by the plaintive moans of “Mama” and “Dada” harassing you through the monitor.

But in the end, it turns out there’s nothing you miss more than your kids. That’s right, thousands of miles away, and the little ones are still in control of our entire weekend. Pop quiz: How much time do you spend thinking about your kids when they’re not there? If you answered the whole time, then ding ding ding! You win a prize! Perhaps the lamest prize of all time.

So, yeah, that happened too.

We spent a good part of the weekend calling for updates. And trying to talk to them. (The one who can talk, at least.) But getting ignored. That’s right. The Doozer was having way too much fun to come to the phone and talk to us. Whatever, jerk store. See if we care. We’re staying out late, drinking, sleeping in. Wishing we were snuggling with you. Worrying. Wondering. How are you doing without us?

But apparently, you don’t care. Here we are, spending our time looking for awesome souvenirs to bring home to you and thinking about you and missing you and—seriously, all the time, for you, scouring the city for trinkets you’ll enjoy. What about us? What about what we want?

Apparently we want to know how they are. And what they are doing. Right now.

And so we talked about them. To friends and fellow wedding guests. If we wanted to, we could show off photos of them. In real time. (We refrained.) But this is who we are now. These are the people we’ve become. It isn’t pretty. At least we’re here, I kept thinking. At least that. We could’ve been so helicopter-ish as to just stay home with them.

But what fun would that be? We’d miss all the karaoke and the drinking and the sleeping in.

Who am I kidding? It would be the best kind of fun.