Missing Father
Yesterday, Abouna had to leave town for an overnight "business trip" (for lack of better terminology!). Our daughter did not take it very well. She's going through a crisis of sorts. She is slowly coming to understand that her father has a job and that many times that job requires him to leave us.
We spend a lot of time with Abouna. We are with him during nearly all church services, we are with him during many church meetings, and we even go with him on the occasional home visit. But there are also times when we cannot be with him. Because there's no set routine to this, our daughter is struggling to understand why sometimes we can be with him and other times we can't. She is also figuring out that "being with him" is not the same as him "being with us."
As he put on his shoes and 3ema (funny hat-thing), she began to bawl. Her knees shook and hail-sized tears flowed down her face. She grasped the end of his robe in one hand. She asked questions she already knew the answer to ("Why are you leaving?") and devastatingly stated the obvious ("I'm going to miss you!"), all between painful, painful sobs.
It has been a season of feasts. Our first Christmas (Holy Nativity), followed by Epiphany, and the Feast of the Wedding of Cana. This weekend we spent 22 hours in church services and meetings and 5 hours in church social obligations. Our sleeping habits, our eating habits were all completely upended, which was no help when it came time to say goodbye.
I want to tell you how I felt through her meltdown, but it is very hard to describe. I'll begin by saying that since the day she was born, her tears cause my stomach to clench unbearably. Her sorrow causes me physical distress. I don't know if this is true for all mothers. As the parent, however, I try to control my breathing and stay calm. This calmness sometimes hardens into a stony silence and blank eyes. This is what happened yesterday. If I had allowed myself to really consider her tears, I probably wouldn't have made it through the goodbye. Whether she realizes it or not (and sometimes I tell her after he leaves), I miss him, too.
Early in our marriage, I read about a couple that had never spent a night apart in their 50+ years of marriage. I loved the idea. I knew zero nights was impossible, so I started counting with the goal of keeping the number down. We had spent less than 10 nights apart total before the priesthood. Now we have spent... I don't know. I have lost count. At minimum, seventy more nights apart in the last six months alone. In this and many other ways, my very definition of marriage is changing.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I just want to say that it's tough being the new priest's family. We miss him. Every moment without him hurts. My daughter and I deal with it in different ways. I'm holding on the hope that we will find a routine and make peace with how our schedule works. I'm distracting myself with service planning, new friends, photo editing, and the occasional Hulu show. And I distract her with shopping trips, snuggly naps, and teasing arguments over silly things. That's all I know to do right now. It's not perfect, and all three of us are hurting.
Among the many tidbits of advice we got from priests before our marriage was the idea that two married people should be like two balls--not ping-pong balls that bounce apart in trouble--but balls of clay that stick together during the tough times. We're sticking together and working our way through it. Pray for us.