The Week Apart

When I woke up this morning my husband and I were holding hands.

It's not that unusual for us, I often wake up to find us holding hands in our sleep, but this morning it seemed more fortuitous than normal. Today marked the day when because of work, we (the children and I) wouldn't see him for another seven days. We've been aware of this period coming up and we've both thought back over our nearly 13 years of marriage (end of this month marks our anniversary) and agreed that being apart for 7 days was actually the longest that we've ever been apart whilst being married. Although his trip to Chile a few years back was his furthest, his planned excursion from Birmingham to Amsterdam makes this trip seem almost local.

The thought of him being away makes me sad.

The Husband aka Flyfour aka Daddy at the Seaside

I mean the reason my husband and I got married was because we were (and still are) best friends (seriously, I know that makes some people gag but we really are). There is almost nothing that he doesn't know about me (He still doesn't know where I hide his Christmas gifts) and there is almost nothing that I don't know about him (well at least I believe there isn't!).

It's no different to any normal week really. Every week on a Monday morning Daddy goes to work on the train and comes home on a Friday night, we don't see him unless we arrange a quick Skype or Facetime call but he sends messages and texts and emails and the space in our bed is quickly filled by me laying in the middle of the bed...

My lovely Bed

The children and I will still get up each morning and do our normal routine of getting ready for School. I'll still come home and slowly work through my chore list and jump on to Facebook and Twitter more times in a day than one really should, all whilst watching some dodgy films on the TV or listening to some of our plethora of CD's to drown out the tinnitus that plagues me.

The children and I will still eat our meals and bounce off to various out of School clubs. We'll do our daily prayers together, read our scriptures and have our family home evening (We do it on a Wednesday instead of a Monday because of our schedules). We'll play computer games and do our homework and scoot down the street on our scooters (well the children will, I've not got a scooter) and we'll expect a phone call in the evening so we can catch up with Daddy on where he's having dinner tonight, or what we did that day that was exciting.

Just this week, instead of picking Daddy up from the Train Station on a Friday night we'll not see him until Sunday night.

Even saying it outloud (What? I speak out loud as I type blog posts, how else would you hear me?!) seems wrong, but I'll pretend that it's no different. That it's my normal and just get on with life this week. Still I know that in all my dark selfish moments I can think of the lunch date that we have planned for a week today, an early Wedding Anniversary celebration and maybe that'll bring a smile to my lips.

The obligatory signing the register photograph from our wedding