Home Alone

This last week my husband, Bob, was in Philly for Americorp VISTA program training Tuesday through Friday.

This was the first time in our four years of marriage that he has left me home alone for a few nights, normally it is the other way around. A few months after we were married I left for an overnight trip for a junior high youth gathering. A few weeks later I was gone for a bishop’s convocation. Since then I have been gone for at two synod assemblies, three trips to visit friends, one senior high youth gathering, two trips to the ELCA Youth Ministry Network extravaganza, one other bishop’s convocation, Baby pastor school and a trip to Calumet. If you are keeping track that is at least 13 trips (I may have forgotten one or two). Most of which were at least two nights, a few were a bit longer.

In all these trips, I try to be good and give Bob a call at some point in the evening when I know he will be heading for bed, and then again in the morning when I'm getting ready for the day.  But that doesn't always happen.  Being the social person that I am, I often get wrapped in hanging out with people and next thing you know it is 1am and therefore as a result the next morning I wake up late and then I'm rushed to get moving (plus I have been known to forget my phone charger rendering me less able to call him). Granted he will call me when he is going to bed and I walk away from the group for a few minutes, but often it is too loud to talk for very long.

Well this time it was the other way around.  Bob was left to call me while I was at home going stir crazy for lack of having someone to talk to, other than the dogs (but I'm not the type of person who will carry on a full conversation with the dogs).  And when I called him, he was out at bars socializing not really able to talk for long.

When I picked Bob up at the train station on Friday he said something that I completely agreed with:  It was good to be on the other foot.  We both now have better idea about what it means to be the one at home or the one away.  Bob realized about 3 hours into  his orientation that the best thing his is going to get out of the conference was networking, the stuff presented he could have read in a book.  So he went outside his normal comfort-zone and spent evenings hanging out with the other VISTA workers and got to know them.  Meanwhile I now know what it is like to sit at home and wait around and how stir crazy it can get.

And on Saturday, the first day post-conference, I normally want to stay at home and relax and Bob wants to do something since he has been home all week....well this time it again was reversed.