Pater Familias … because I'm your FATHER!

Roadie Leads To At-Home Daddy Guilt

September 30, 2010

Got to go easy on myself for exulting, to such an embarrassing degree, in last week’s anthem to my newly liberated self with legit employment outside our dutch colonial (at least for a few weeks). You gotta understand how good it felt to be the traveling magazine-writer man I once was. Also, I was deep in northern New Mexico. Nothing like doing 80 mph through sun-smacked polychrome magnificent West for feeling all buzzed-up and heroic.

Lasted all of 72 hours.

Less than that, actually, if you count back to the minute Minerva told me over the phone that Girl Child got sick at school – throat, fever, headache – and had to go home early. One of our two go-to child care professionals, bless her, brought GC home and put her to bed. But the sitter couldn’t stay long because she takes care of another girl after school. This kid’s an especially good one, 10 years old to GC’s seven, and they get along like bandits when the sitter does double coverage. That, however, was not an option what with GC’s germs. Minerva managed to get home in time to take over.

With both sitters booked elsewhere after noon the following day, Minerva would have to come early again.

Guilt. Hate it, but I had it. All the at-home habits of mind took over, and I felt like I let my females down, that I ought to be the solution to what was obviously a major household hairball that only happened because I wasn't there. I got on my phone and attempted to contact a second-line sitter. I also went round and round with a helpful airline rep about going home early, but nothing beat the reservation I already had. 

Didn’t have one damn thing to feel bad about, bro, did I? But I did. On the other hand, I thought maybe I gained a spouse point or two because Minerva would be freshly reminded why it’s good to have an at-home, Also felt some smug Welcome to my life, baby. But Welcome to her life, too. I got a minor, short-term dose of what she deals with all the time, being unable to get home when home pulls hardest – like now, when our baby could use mommy and daddy close by. Minerva, being Minerva, doesn’t make much noise about the downsides of executive mamahood.

No free rides – are there? – with offspring. Or without them, for that matter. 

It rained the day I started home. There were flash flood warnings all over New Mexico. Last hour to Albuquerque it full-on poured.

Oh yeah, the ailing Girl Child. Dr. Rebekkah tested and said strep throat, with some clucking about how nasty the poor kid's throat looked. But then a full day into the antibiotics, our daughter was her usual revved-up self. 

And I'm glad as ever to have some paying work. 

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