It was one of those Sundays when the sun was too hot, the drive was too long and the nerves were too frayed to play nice except for in front of the children. Otherwise we were prone to throwing insults to the wind, cursing under our breath at each other, slapping steak spice and barbecue sauce on the ribs as they cooked and generally slamming cutlery around in a sort of angry tango. The after-meal walk was more of the same, with Ben stalking ahead of me through the woods, talking to the kids intently, wisely choosing to ignore my mood. Not sure if the emergency of him leaving changed things or if my declaration that he was being a jerk wore him down (it probably surprised him) but by the time we returned to the house he had his arm around my shoulders and I had my customary position with one fist curled around the back of his shirt at the waist.
And then he smiled and grabbed his pack and kissed the kids and I followed him outdoors into the glare of the sun once again, head still splitting from the stress of waiting for this moment, and he kissed me and followed Christian to the truck, headed for the airport, back to work, back to routine, back to a scaled-down version of life on the road but not because there's no bus and seven minutes down the road from the studio is a place that makes even better ribs. He should know, he'll eat them every single day.
Here's the weird part. My bad mood? (Aside from wishing he didn't have to fly out again) Saturday night got away from me and I followed some of the boys onto the vodka train and then fell asleep late, waking up with nightmares of living in Sussex facing a dike, not concerned for the floods but for the small-town mentality and the fact that the apartment we had leased was still full of furniture that wasn't ours. I woke him up with my unconscious hyperventilating and so we didn't get any sleep. Zero. Zip. Zilch.
He said we were sharing, He was hung and I was over.
As usual, he is right.
Snort.
