Missoula News

Column: Savagemama

Separation Anxiety: How Would Mama Survive a Weekend Alone?

By Jennifer Savage, 9-13-07

Seth is going to Portland this weekend to celebrate the retirement of his papa. I’m staying home. We talked about taking a family trip to Oregon but then remembered we just did that in July and I was back East with Eliza for two weeks in August and like everyone else in Missoula we’ve been booked since Memorial Day, so I decided to sit this one out. I love Seth’s Dad and I’d love to be there to help him celebrate his cutting ties with the corporate world but Seth and I agreed; he should go, Eliza and I should stay.

We agreed, until last week.

Seth started dropping hints about how he and Eliza could go to Portland and what a treat that would be for his dad.

“Why not,” he said. He pointed out I had taken Eliza, more than once, to see my family when he had to stay home. Couldn’t he do the same?

“No,” I said.

“I’ll take breast milk. We’ll be fine,” he said. “Just think you could do whatever you want.”

“But she’s never been away from me for a night. You’ll have to get up in the middle of the night. It would be 24/7 baby care. Are you sure you could do it?”

“It will be hard but I’ll have help and besides it’s for two days,” he said.

“Yeah, but, she’s my baby,” I said. It was the best I could do. All I had left in the arsenal. He was, in fact, making perfect sense.

Still, I’ve been walking around this week thinking he’s lost his mind.

There is no way he could do it. He’d be exhausted, stretched too thin with trying to take care of her and see family on a short visit. What if she whines to nurse, what if she won’t eat. Will he feed her well? Will he remember to change her diaper? Will her keep her hair out of her eyes? Will he watch her to make sure she doesn’t fall down stairs, grab his dad’s aged dog by the tail, drink from the cat bowl? Can he keep up with her in the airport? What about all the stuff – the car seat, the backpack? Will he remember her sippy cup? Her pacifier?

I’ve gone down this path so many times since he mentioned the possibility of taking her and I always come to the same end – dangerously close to an anxiety attack. I’ve have even called my therapist, who can’t see me until Monday, by which time all of this nonsense will be over. Seth is a fantastic dad to Eliza and really, it’s not her I’m worried about. It’s me.

So I’ve been taking deep breaths.

I have to admit, I have, in the few moments, when I’ve not been whipped up from the mere thought of two and a half days without Eliza, indulged the thought of sleeping late, watching a movie in a theatre, drinking wine with girlfriends. Then I start thinking about what I would do, by the hour. Saturday, 10 a.m. (let’s be honest here) 11 a.m., Farmers’ Market. Out by noon. Maybe I’d walk down to the other farmers’ market. Leave downtown by 1ish. Then what? I’m sure I could find something to do but I imagine my day dragging on slowly because I’m not trying to feed Eliza in a coffee shop downtown or make sure we take a long walk around naptime. I imagine a compassionate friend would invite me over for dinner but even if I survived Saturday, what about Sunday? Twelve waking hours of no plans, no naps, no avacado/blackbean meals. What then?

If you haven’t figured it out, Eliza and I are a matched set. Where I go, she goes. Work, the bathroom, restaurants, the garden. She plays peek-a-boo with the shower curtain when I’m in the shower, she cruises across the room and climbs up my legs when I make her breakfast. There are some days I do wish she were a little less interested in me but I know those days will come. So for now, she’s my girl. I’m her mama. How could Seth even think of taking her with him for the weekend? It’s absurd!

In my rare moments of clarity over the past few days it has occurred to me more than once that maybe I am the one who is losing my mind, the one being absurd. My husband is offering me the weekend off, to do whatever I’d like. The only problem is I can’t seem to remember what it is I do. How did I spend all that time I had on my hands before Eliza came along?

I’m starting to feel like that girl in high school, that girl that likes that boy too much. The one that sits around waiting for him to call, the one who abandons all of her friends to sit at home on a Saturday night because she never heard from him. The one that’s kind of a loser. Have I become so wrapped up in my baby girl that I can’t see this weekend for what it is, a kind and generous gift?

Okay, I’m breathing again.

In all fairness, mothering is a consistent 120 percent effort. As a mama, if you aren’t giving 120 percent all the time somebody is crawling around hungry and with dirty pants. So maybe I’m not a loser, maybe it’s just that the thought of letting go, turning over the reigns completely for 48 hours, is a little shocking. Add in the distance, the what-if-something-happens factor and I’m back on the phone with my therapist. 

Seth leaves Saturday morning and we’ve stopped talking about the trip openly. We’ve moved to the speaking-through-Eliza, passive but not quite aggressive phase of communication.

“How could Daddy think of taking you all the way to Portland?” I’ll ask her, Seth standing so close I could touch him.

“We’d have a good ‘ole time,” he’ll say. “Tell your mama we’d have a good ‘old time little thing.”

I figure we have two more days to go on like this and I just hope my therapist has a cancellation in the next day or two. But with or without the assistance of a trained psychologist, come Friday, we’ll have to make a decision. I know I’d survive if Seth took Eliza to Portland but missing her isn’t something I’m used to I don’t think it’s something I’ll ever get used to.

Check back every week with Savagemama’s blog at www.newwest.net/savagemama.

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