Pictures on the wall

I hate jet lag. Your body doesn't know whether to be asleep or awake. You can't figure out when to eat or what you should be eating. You feel a bit like the walking dead, or at least like you're sleep walking. I owe this present particular bout of jet lag to a trip to Hawaii. DH had a conference there this past week and the kids and I tagged along. A very interesting and fun week, but exhausting for sure.

I've never gone along with DH to a conference before. Even before we had kids (we were married for 5 years before Q arrived), it never really seemed to be a possibility. I guess part of that was due to lack of money. DH never has much money for travel and he would share a room with a bunch of other conference attendees, thereby decreasing the cost. And when I was working in the public schools, you get the vacation they give you, you can't just take off for a vacation when school is in session. But this time it was different, mostly because this conference was in Hawaii. I simply could not contemplate being stuck at home with the kids by myself for a week while he got to go to Hawaii. I know, I'm selfish but it was far better to go than to just stay home and seethe.

But to be honest that wasn't the only reason. DH and I have started to realize that for our marriage to work, we just can't carry on mostly separate lives that intersect just occasionally. There are all these people he knows and admires, and loves to hang out with on the conference circuit and I only knew them by name. That meant that to a certain extent they didn't seem like real people to me. I got a bit jealous knowing that he was having all these wonderful and interesting conversations with people that I have never even met. It was like a whole separate life that he had that I had no knowledge of. Similarly I felt like to most of these people I was simply a name or a picture on the wall, easily forgotten or tucked away. Worse yet as a stay at home mom I don't have a cool interesting job that helps define who I am. Sure my job does define me but what exactly do people think about when they hear "stay at home mom"? We're talking about intellectuals and academics here. I'm sure to many I look somewhat like a trophy wife, which I am most certainly not. So I wanted these people to know me. Or at least see that there is someone interesting there to get to know. I wanted to be more than just the picture on the wall. And I wanted to start to get to know them. I wanted to know how they figure into DH's life. I wanted to be involved in interesting conversations with them and experience a little of what DH is so drawn to. So off to the conference I went.

But of course I did have two kids in tow which makes life so much more messy and interesting. And just possibly, taking two kids across multiple time zones might not have been the best idea. Q never got used to the time change and is still up at night even though we're home now. C did better but regularly woke up there at 5:30am. I must admit that by 6:30 I was up and raring to go as well. Not the norm for me. Then Q got sick and that made life much more difficult. For starters it greatly limited what we could do. A child with a runny nose and fever doesn't want to do much at all. Luckily our hotel grounds were amazing and we could just walk around and be entertained which helped. Also luckily we stayed at the conference hotel meaning that DH was much more accessible and occasionally I could actually meet up with him when he was meeting with other conference goers. Because of Q's illness this was far harder than I would have liked but it was possible a few times. I got to meet a whole bunch of people I only knew by name and even got to have some conversations with people. It felt really good to be part of that instead of looking in from the outside. Of course it wasn't my conference. I didn't attend any panels and didn't expect people to be able to talk shop with me. But it still felt good. I know it restricted DH some. I tried to be as sensitive to that as I could. With Q sick this was harder than I would have liked but I tried to remember that above all this was a working trip and not a vacation. When DH had to work, we tried not to get in the way. And occasionally we had some time together as a family. What we did not get was alone couple time, also due to Q's illness. Imagine being in Hawaii and no moonlit walks on the beach! Very frustrating!

I don't expect we'll always travel with DH. There were a number of conference goers who also had family with them but I think Hawaii was a special case. DH has said that family members generally don't come along to these things. But really good friends of ours were also there as a family and so it was easier for us moms to go out together. Maybe even in the future we could leave the kids with grandparents and go alone. (Ah, the impossible dream!!) And DH goes away quite a few times during the year so it would hard to always go with him. But if the conference was in a good place I really wanted to visit (warm temperatures would help) I can see us going again. Hopefully no one would be ill and life would be a bit easier. This trip did show me that it can be done and we all still love each other in the end, even if we are so tired we can't see straight. I feel much better having met some of the people that are such a big part of DH's intellectual life. And maybe they got to see just a little bit more than a picture on the wall.

Now if anyone has any ideas on how to get over jet lag, I'd love to hear them.