A couple days of lunches stacked in the refrigerator. A dinner I will never eat simmering in the crock pot. Sosie’s bug hat set out on her dresser in preparation (and as a reminder) for Thursday’s Wacky Hat Day. All signs point to Mom on a business trip.
In 2009, I made 13 business trips in 12 months. For the Up-in-the-Air type avid business traveler this is peanuts. But for this doting wife and mother, it reads like a marathon at the pace of a sprint. When I was breastfeeding Sosie during her first year of life, I used to swear that if I invested all of the mental and physical gymnastics I did to calculate supply, maintain and lug equipment, multitask pumping with conference calls, and worry worry worry about whether she had enough to eat, I could easily solve global warming or the rising water crisis in the Middle East. But since my pump and I called it quits, I’ve replaced it all with a frantic two-step of traveling Mom prep and guilt.
But for all of the planning and preparation and anguish and omnipresent guilt, over the past year I’ve come to realize that business trips are my well-deserved me time. Clients and coworkers become my “girls’ night out.” Cramming all night in a hotel room doesn’t feel nearly as miserable and lonely as when I’m forced to do it just a few rooms away from my warm, sweet, sleeping husband. And no one controls the remote control to my mini-business class television except me. Bring on the Zac Efron movies.
And with all of the free time I pick up by not having to run the home/train station/daycare/work/daycare/train station/home loop, or cook and clean up meals, or pick up toys, or argue about whose TURN it is on the television, I find myself alone with my thoughts. Small moments are noticed and realizations weave more poetically through my head. And I feel the old whirlygirl come to life. And all of those little bits of life that are far too incidental to be heard over the noise of my overbearing daily routine.
As I embark on my first business trip of 2010, the first of four in January alone, I’ve committed myself to trying to find the patterns in the chaos. To dedicate these lonely hotel nights to something a bit bigger than myself. And to search beyond quick Twitter reports on taxi driver skill (and scent) to bring something bigger back with me when I return.
No more mad dashes for airport souvenirs. I’m too busy creating a new home away from home.
