The longest 11 days

18 days ago Jason left for India. On day two, I woke up and my laptop wouldn’t let me log in. What ensued was craziness. Jason is my tech support in all things, and he wasn’t here. My brother did his best remotely and my computer limped along for a few days, but with each day it got worse. Luckily my blackberry, a tiny little thing I can put in the pocket of my jeans, connected me to the world.

I still had email, I could text, and Jason could call me if the time was right. It still boggles my mind that on day three I sat at Noah’s baseball practice on a sunny Sunday and talked to my husband on the other side of the world like he was down the street. Pretty cool. But he wasn’t down the street. He was on the other side of the world, and somewhere in between, on day six, a volcano in Iceland decided to erupt. Excuse me?

After a long week of being the single parent, on day eight, our phone rang at seven in the morning and it was Jason telling me what we had feared. He was stuck. The plane he had hoped to get on later in the day was grounded in Germany. He was in the corporate travel office where three Indian employees were all working frantically to find flights home for Jason and two colleagues. One would be sent the other direction around the globe, through the Far East to the west coast, whereas the Jason and his boss would try to avoid the volcanic ash by going further south through Dubai, then over to Washington, DC. If all went as planned, he would get home two days late, on my 39th birthday. Day eleven.

I prepared for another weekend alone with the kids, and my sister came up to spend time with us. She took us out for a birthday lunch a day early, day ten. She even made sure the kids had a card for me, and that the waiters and waitresses sang to me. It still wasn’t right though.

On day eleven, I woke up alone and a year older. Alanya did her best reminding me over and over “You aren’t old, you’re young!” Somehow she didn’t convince me. Since Friday I had been dealing with the realization that no matter what we did, Jason was stuck on the other side of the world. It wasn’t a very good feeling. And until he came home, or at least was talking to me from American soil, I wouldn’t be happy.

First an email from Washington, DC, but they missed their connection. Then, an email from Boston. Finally, a phone call from the car. 2pm on my birthday I walked into the house to find a freshly showered, utterly exhausted husband, and it was the best birthday present ever.

All in all he was gone eleven days, but I can’t remember the last time we were apart that long. Too long. Reminds me of the summer he lived in Chicago and I was in Tunisia for nearly three months. Back then, Skype was only on the Jetsons, email was non-existent, and calling was still “long distance.” After that summer, we said never again, and we were engaged weeks later. Although I’m happy Jason had this experience to go to India, and I was happy to have the time with the kids, it served as a reminder of why we entered this marriage in the first place. We don’t want to spend another day apart from one another.