the daddy deficit.

i have spent more years than i care to recall waiting for my husband to come back to me.


of course, he wasn't always my husband.  at first, he was one of two boys who shared a flat with me and several other students during my semester abroad. the rest of the girls thought of him as the "weird one."  but i was in love from the moment he accosted me in the hallway to find out just exactly where i had been all his life on the first day of school.

he wore a yellow t-shirt and shorts.  he had a huge working vocabulary and an abiding love of foreign film.  he liked to argue the salient points of deconstructionism and he stole food from our flatmates' cupboards. sometimes he replaced it with pricey organic substitutes, a practice that enraged our other resident male.  (he took all my mars bars and left me with couscous, matt said, through gritted teeth.)  come to think of it, he was kind of weird.  

 
still, i spent plenty of afternoons sitting by the window in our common room, watching the sky get dusky and waiting for him to return to the flat in the hope that he wouldn't go straight to his own room.  if he popped through the kitchen door, it obviously meant that he was truly, madly, deeply in love with me too.  and not that he was after a bacon sandwich.

when he did decide that he was truly, madly, deeply in love with me (and that is another story for another post...or twelve) i was already back in america.  


i spent years scraping the money together to "hop across the pond" or help him hop on over to my place.  and in the weeks and months between visits, i went the stages of grief and more than my share of cookies, while i waited for a time we could be together permanently.


permanently is a pretty strong word.  

the truth is that i never expected that--once reunited--my husband would never, ever leave the my side.  literally.  but someone i know has recently decided that this is a reasonable expectation.  

a little background: my husband is a teacher, so he spent the summer looking after the baby full-time.  they caroused on the couch, hung out by the baby pool, ate lots of yummy snacks and generally yucked it up while i was *slaving* away at the office.  now, the summer is over and the baby is in daycare from 9 to 2.  he has early mornings hanging out with me and then when i pick him up in the afternoon, he heads to the office to finish out the day.  meanwhile, daddy doesn't usually get home until dinnertime.  so all told, the baby spends more quality time with me now that he is in daycare.  but less with time with daddy.

every evening, when he hears the key in the door, sweetie baby shows signs of anxious anticipation.  and then, when daddy walks in the room, he breaks into a huge grin.  

the only trouble is that then he doesn't want daddy to go anywhere.  if daddy deigns to leave the room to change his clothes or go to the bathroom--meltdown.  if daddy walks across the room to grab a drink of water--meltdown.  if daddy stands up and looks in the direction--well anything but sweetie baby--you guessed it.  meltdown.

after so many sweet hours together, the baby is definitely feeling a deficit in his daddy time.  he seems to have a simple plan to combat the problem.  never let daddy out of his sight again.

now someone new waits at the window for my husband his daddy to come back to him, to come home to us. 

wonder who watches out for you tonight?