It was drop off day-to-day. Back to work. Back to routine and to reality that comes with the working ‘week’, paying the bills and making the world turn until the next weekend comes around. The kids were with us for todays drop off. It’s never easy with the kids. One always gets teary for long enough to make us doubt for just a minute the reason we are doing this despite having been doing it years.
Today whilst watching the mangroves whiz by I saw out of the corner of my eye B2’s head burrowed into his arm ‘whats the matter? I asked.
FIFO husband answered for him ‘He is upset I’m going away’.
I had a headache from hell starting and its fallacy that girls are the drama queens boys can wear that crown equally well if not better and so I said without turning ‘You’re not Dad is not’ I said flatly ‘going away you’re/ he is going to bloody work’.
The remainder of the drive which was all of two minutes was silent the goodbye however was not. I love you can never be said enough, hugs never tight enough and kisses a plenty. It was a goodbye worthy of all that is good despite knowing you are under the scrupulous watch of the security guard.
Yet I always question myself on that part, the correcting of not going ‘away’ but to ‘work’. Is it my place to correct to make it less of a deal? Because we all have to work and this is what we have chosen.
For me he isn’t ‘away’ he is at work its how it’s always been whether it’s waving him good-bye on a deployment for nine months or for four weeks to offshore contract. Its how we have explained things to the boys. The husband tells me the same it is for him as soon as he steps inside the terminal describing it as a switch goes on he is at work nothing else.
Just like dropping him off for work at a depot its the same for me at the airport but do I have the right to say that in that moment before the switch goes on for him?
To me saying it any other way than going to work is creating the impression of an ‘absences’ from us which to me when said as going ‘away’ is to leave us without a purpose other than work and one I associate with a ‘holiday’ and this is far from a holiday no matter the end you are at. And I want my boys to understand the difference to know the difference.
We wouldn’t after all make a deal about dropping Daddy off to work at a depot so this to me is no different but in the moment of when my child is dealing with some grief or we are two minutes out from the terminal {because I’m not so worn to this lifestyle not to understand there is a window of grief and adjustment that happens and how you deal with that is a whole other post} but do I however have the right to correct my family and place it into the perspective that we have agreed on or not because I’m not the one ‘leaving’ or ‘going away’ and the switch has not yet flipped for him yet regardless that it does for me the minute we commence our drive to the airport.
Tell me what do you think?
xx Deb
