Switching Gears with Comings and Goings

A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.
~Andre Maurois

By now those of you, who read my blog regularly, know that my husband travels quite a bit. This is a job he has had for only two years. (I have to say here that have always appreciated the sacrifices military families make, but I now have a greater understanding of what they must go through being apart as they must be.) The job he had before for many years was one were he was on-call after regular business hours as a field service engineer, who worked on high speed printers, which run 24/7 so they can breakdown at any time in the night.

My husband's work schedule then has always been one to keep me on my toes. Whenever he was on-call, he might be home or I might not see much him at all for the entire week. I became so used to this lifestyle that it got to the point that I no longer even heard his beeper go off (when beepers were used) or his cell phone while I slept, and he was so adept in dressing quietly in the dark that I did not even notice he had left my side or heard the car start up. Even our dogs learned to follow him around quietly and then come back to lie down when he left. I cannot give a count of the times he was just going to bed when I was getting up, or how I was just going to bed when he got a call to go out, or that he just drove in the the driveway to drive right back out, or just got into bed to have to leave again, or that he worked during the day and did not come home at all until the next day to eat a meal and sleep.

Often, when he was home, he was tired and understandably so for he always worked some unscheduled overtime. It was rather customary that several times each week that he would call saying go ahead with supper as he would be late. It was not that uncommon for him to work up to 50 extra hours in one week. Now, my husband is a patient (more so that I am), practical (for the most part), and highly principled (quoting my mother here) man, but when a person is sleep deprived and eats irregularly timed meals, he is just not at his best. I, thankfully, learned to lower my expectations of him when he worked so many hours, even though my husband still considers me a high-maintenance kind of woman.

After around 25 years with one company bought out by another three times and keeping his benefits of seniority, my husband was let go of that job at the beginning of December in 2007, about 2½ years ago. (What happened then is story worth writing at another time.) After being out of work for almost five months, he was hired for his current job.

This job was nearly at his same base pay, but it was salaried—no possible overtime. There also would be no company car, as he had always had in the past, so it was going to be difficult with just one car. Then there was the traveling: he would be traveling so that he would be away from home from Monday morning to Friday evening most of the time and then he could be away for weeks, including weekends for special shows or training.

Now from one point of view, my husband is not home as much, but when he is home, he is generally in a better mood and better rested. He is careful to go to hotels with better beds for his back and he is not on-call to leave at a moment's notice in the middle of the night; in other words, for the first time in decades, he can sleep nights. I don't know that I see him any less than I did before and we actually have weekends together most of the time, so we can make real plans, which was not the case before.

It is a bit more difficult for the Princess in some ways. There is not the day-to-day last minute disappointment for our daughter that her father will not be home that evening or not able to go to church with us, however we go through this emotional roller-coaster that begins with saying good-bye to her daddy at the airport or car rental place until we again see him.

After two years of this, you would think it I would be used to all the nuances associated with it. We laughingly tell people we met on the phone and so we have always done well with being apart like this as long as we can talk on the phone, which is true for the most part. What I was not really prepared to handle was having full responsibility of everything when he is away. It is not like he is at a customer account just an hour or two away as before when the Princess and I were in a car accident (again, another story for another time)....Oh, no! Instead, he is hours away in Canada, New York, California, Israel, Mexico, etc. When he is in another country we cannot really talk to each other much either.

And, just when I am feeling somewhat comfortable (as if that is even possible for me) with the lone-parent-in-charge-of-everything thing, the man is back home. I cannot tell you how many times he looks at me directly and says "I'm home now and I can handle this," when I take charge of something he is right there to do himself.

We all have to switch gears nearly every week. Thankfully, he has been home since Tuesday night and is scheduled (although such things can change) to be home next week as well. I am happily switching gears again, but his last trip was particularly hard because he was gone on an important holiday. The Princess has not wanted to do lessons since his return and, frankly, I do not blame her as I feel the same, so we have been struggling with each other through the subject she likes the least: math.

Today I finally admitted to my husband how lonely I have been feeling lately and he admitted to me how tired he has been because his job has been very demanding lately, so he has not been his best when we have talked on the phone. One thing we know about ourselves, everything around us can fall apart (and a great deal has at times), but we are fine as long as we are communicating well with each other and neither one of us lets problems in that area go on for too long...perhaps that is why my loves-to-fix-things man and his high-maintenance wife do so well together.

~ Thank you, my Lord, for my husband, for my marriage. ~