Recently, my wife’s travel for work has picked up. She’s been gone a lot, and ultimately, I have mixed feelings about it. Is it tough to be an only parent for him? Yes, it is. But it is pretty nice to be his favorite person in the house which just doesn’t happen when Mommy is around. The yin and yang of parenting as some might call it.
Usually, her trips are somewhere in the 2-3 day range which is incredibly manageable, especially on weekdays as most of his day is filled up with school. I have a few more responsibilities in the morning, and then a few more in the evening. I always handle wake up and early morning snack before Mommy takes over and gets him ready and off to school. Then, I pick him up and get dinner going before Mommy takes over for bath and bed. The only big challenge is keeping him entertained while I make dinner, but that is why tacos are a Dad’s best friend.
This all goes rather smoothly as long as he goes to school. The problem is that this man keeps getting sick when his Mom goes out of town. My wife went out of town for work, and we were going to meet her in Ohio after her trip was over. He was sick for all four days that we were stuck at home. I had serious doubts that we would be able to travel, but you better believe that man had instant health on the day of the flight to go meet up with Mommy.
I was a little relieved with his sickness as he usually gets sick about once a month. It’s his first year at daycare since he was home for the early pandemic, so he’s getting all of those germs that other kids have already experienced in previous cycles. But with my wife’s huge 10 day trip only a couple weeks away, I should at least be in the clear for that. I’m an optimistic person, so yes, I can see the positives of my child getting sick if it works more conveniently into my schedule.
Unfortunately that did not come to fruition as again, with my wife gone for a ten-day work trip, he managed to be out of school for another couple days. I am incredibly fortunate that my work allows me the flexibility to work around a childcare schedule when needed as I do not know how people can manage to have children and go into an office. Like, if your kid is as sick as often as mine, all of my PTO and then some would have been used up at the halfway point of this year.
It’s still absolutely exhausting balancing the two.
But then I realized something. Maybe this is just his way of showing that he loves me the most. With Mom out of the way, there’s no need for school, let’s play. So he just spends every waking moment with me (and Ricky Zoom—there was SO much Ricky Zoom). He may not outwardly show that he loves me the most, but his actions of having nonstop fevers when his Mom leaves town shows that biologically, I’m clearly his number one choice. It’s clear he is getting sick on purpose to spend more time with me. This isn’t an enjoyable way to experience love, but I’ll take what I can get as I am the second-class citizen in his parenting world.
Of course, my hypothesis faced its greatest challenge when Mom was still in town as my son tested positive for Covid. There was no epic tale for us as he was asymptomatic (thank God), so he just had to stay home from school for nearly two weeks until the school deemed he would come back. Since Mom was in town, he had no reason to actually be sick so he just happily went about his day as my wife and I tried to balance work with keeping a healthy child entertained, which is actually far more difficult than keeping a sick child entertained.
My wife leaves town again this weekend for another ten-day trip. I feel extremely confident that he will get sick during this time. But maybe, just maybe, it’s out a deep-rooted biological sense of love and wanting to spend time with his Dad. Maybe he really does love me that much.
Or maybe it’s just bad luck…for both of us.