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The First Lonely

My girls came home from their first out-of-state visitation last night. They just turned 7 a couple of weeks ago, and besides a couple of overnight camping trips with my mom to the mountains of North Carolina, they have never been away from home overnight for very long. Any of the times that they have spent the night with their dad in Michigan previously, Kylie and I have been in a hotel a few miles away.

It was certainly hard to let them go. I joked with my team at work that I was going to live there for the eight days that I would be without the girls. I have had little kids for so long that I really don’t know how to be a solo adult. At first, it was definitely a little strange. On Saturday nights, we have a tradition of watching a kid movie, getting takeout, and camping out in the living room. The first night that they were gone would have been our campout night, but instead, I stayed late at work before starting to binge watch a new show on Amazon Prime. When the girls arrived in Michigan (hello, twelve hour drive), they FaceTimed me to let me know they were there. They excitedly showed me the room that had been decorated for them and the goodies that were waiting in bookbags. All was well.

The following night’s FaceTime was not quite as fun. Bella was as talkative as ever, but Livvy was so homesick that she couldn’t even talk to me. She just sat in front of her screen with tears streaming down her face because she missed home. Part of me knew she would be the one to have a rough time being away. She is such a mommy’s girl, and I would have paid anything to be able to hug her. Eventually, she came around though. The Captain and his wife did a great job of making them feel welcome, and I am grateful. They really did have a good time.

For me, it was strange to not have little children around. For the first time, I didn’t have to rush to make the 6pm afterschool pickup time. I didn’t have to stress about hurrying home to meet my babysitter after work. No one was waiting for me to make dinner or read stories for summer reading logs. No one was watching out of the living room picture window for my car (except for the dog). The first couple of days were really, really weird. One night, I caught myself turning the volume down on the television because I was afraid that it would wake the girls up. The realization that they weren’t even there was dizzying.

This was the first lonely I have felt in seven years.

When Kylie was little, I used to dread the weekends that she would spend with her dad. The situation was a little different because he was somewhat local. Those were the days before every kid had a cell phone or iPad, so I could not easily talk to her if I wanted to. Rat Bastard was also a giant ass in the way that he would avoid my calls or turn his phone off altogether so that I could not communicate with her. There were times that he would not return her on time. I spent hours in parking lots waiting for him sometimes. The nights that she was gone, I would pace around my living room and worry. I was a giant bundle of anxiety, both because of Rat Bastard’s behavior and because of my own inability to find distractions to occupy my free time.

This time, I vowed to do better. In a way, I felt like I had to strike an odd balance between missing the girls while also taking advantage of this gift of short-term independence. I think that I did okay with it. I had two days off midweek, and I knocked countless things off my to-do list. On July 5th, I started 75 Hard with a group of work colleagues (although I subscribed to more of the 75 Medium mindset). It proved to be just the thing to help me focus my energy. I only worked ridiculously late one night, and that was on Independence Day because I didn’t have plans otherwise. I didn’t see a single firework this year, and I wasn’t even sad about it.

Today, I spent a good chunk of my early afternoon going through multiple boxes of keepsakes that I have saved over the years. Each of my daughters has their own box crammed with anything and everything that I could not part with from babyhood to Pre-K, kindergarten and beyond. I have one of my own that dates back to elementary school. Somehow over the past few years, the boxes have become jumbled, and it was making me crazy to see the unorganized piles. I turned on a podcast, lit a lavender candle, and sorted for hours. I found hospital bracelets, chorus concert brochures, forgotten birthday cards, and concert tickets. There were photos, birth and wedding announcements, and funeral programs. My favorite things to find are the girls’ elementary school stories written on composition book pages, carefully handwritten with backward letters and misspellings. I found a ring that my grandmother gave me when I was in high school. There was a locket from my brother with a photo of me from my senior year on one side and a picture of him with his cat on the other. We looked so incredibly young. I came across two letters that Emily wrote to me sometime in the 90’s when I was staying in Michigan with my grandparents for the summer. When she passed away, I tore through my boxes looking for them, desperate to find any part of her that I could cling to, and with the exception of one intricately folded note, I could not find them anywhere. Today, by some sort of magic, they were there.

Going through all of the things from years past reminded me of so many things that have mattered a lot to me. My girls don’t have visitation again until October, the week of fall break. They will be excited to make more memories of their own, and it will undoubtedly be easier for all of us then. I know that they will be excited, and we will all know how to prepare a little bit better.

I miss them already.