Adult Abandonment Okay, Child Abandonment Not So Much

Abandoning my husband on a regular basis was acceptable.  After all, he was an adult and just reverted to being a bachelor (minus the strip parties or dating) when I deployed or was underway.  This meant that he could walk around all day in his underwear and eat meals consisting of cereal, instant noodles, or pizza.  And compared to other spouses, his spending basically dropped to $20 a month.  It was a great deal!  All he had to do was clean up the pizza boxes before I got home.

But then I had kids.  And suddenly, it wasn't the same as abandoning just their Dad.  Now I abandoned them with their Dad... which meant they ate cereal, instant noodles, pizza, lunch meat, cottage cheese, and yogurt.  Just kidding.  That's what I feed them when Dad leaves us occasionally.

It has become harder to leave.  In fact, it has become so hard that while I was stationed at Dahlgren, VA for three months for school, I decided to drive nearly everyday between Annapolis and Dahlgren.  This also had to do with the fact that there was very little to do in Dahlgren.  (For those of you who are lucky enough to never have been stationed there, the main hang out spots are the local Italian restaurant that acts like the bar and the new Wal-Mart.)  Keep in mind that it was an hour and a half commute each way.  I loved my kids so much that I spent three hours in a car everyday just so I could eat dinner with them and tuck them into bed at night.  Because my kids are little night owls, it meant that I would usually get to spend an hour with them awake for every hour that I spent in a car.  Fortunately, there was another officer in my class who was in the same situation so we were able to split the mileage on our cars...

Now that I am up in Newport, RI completing six months of department head school, it's been harder.  After all, there's no way for me to come home every night for dinner and bedtime.  Instead, I'm racking up the airline miles on Southwest.  But every mile or minute spent in the airport is worth it for another minute playing, tickling, hugging, snuggling them.  It was worth the hundreds of dollars in the roundtrip ticket to watch Owen's face as he watched The Lion King for the first time or Anduin falling asleep against me after our shower before I could even finish drying her off.


But let's be honest.  Had it just been Niles...  I probably would have abandoned him.  After all, adult abandonment is okay, child(ren) abandonment is not.