They’ll Be Okay Without Us

I woke up before everyone else this morning.

The house is quiet. My wife and daughters are still asleep, and in a few hours, my wife and I will pick up our bags and leave for Europe. For ten days, our daughters, who are three and one, will stay home without us.

I’ve been looking forward to this trip for a long time. We’re going to see places I’ve never seen, eat delicious food, experience things I will remember for the rest of my life, and step away from many of the responsibilities that consume our ordinary days.

I should probably be thinking about Europe. Instead, sitting here in the quiet of my house, I keep thinking about the two little girls sleeping nearby.

In a few hours, I’m going to hug them goodbye and voluntarily leave them for ten days. And soon after, I’ll be walking through the gates of Disneyland without my three-year-old.

Even writing that sentence makes me feel like an asshole.

There are plenty of reasonable explanations for leaving our daughters home. They’re young. Traveling internationally with a one-year-old and a three-year-old is not exactly relaxing. They’re unlikely to remember much of the trip. There will be long flights, unfamiliar beds, disrupted routines, late nights, lots of walking, and places they probably couldn’t care less about seeing.

I can make a pretty convincing argument that this trip makes more sense without them.

And then there’s Disneyland Paris.

My oldest daughter would absolutely lose her mind. She would love it.

I know what her face would look like. I know how excited she would be. I know there would be things she would talk about afterward, even if the memories eventually faded. And I know there will probably be a moment while I’m there when I see another little girl around her age and think about mine.

That makes the easy explanations a little less satisfying. Because the truth is that we aren’t leaving our daughters home simply because there is nothing on this trip for them.

We are choosing to go without them.

And there is something about choosing to be away that I am struggling with.

I work a lot. Between my day job, my private practice, and the Army Reserve, there are plenty of days when I wish I had more time with my daughters. The Army takes me away from home regularly, sometimes for a few days and occasionally for much longer. I have missed things. I will miss more things.

Usually, though, there is something psychologically convenient about those absences.

I have to go.

Orders are orders. Work has responsibilities. Clients are scheduled. People depend on me. There are places I am expected to be and things I am responsible for doing.

Today is different. Nobody is making me go to Europe. There is no obligation sending me away for ten days to see parts of the world I have wanted to see.

I am choosing it.

There is something about voluntary absence that feels different when you already worry that you are gone too much. It raises a question I don’t particularly enjoy asking myself:

If I already have too little time with my daughters, what does it mean to willingly give some of it away?

Parenthood has a strange way of changing the moral weight of enjoyment.

Before children, taking a trip is just taking a trip. After children, particularly when they are young, pleasure can suddenly feel like something that needs to be justified.

Should they be there? Am I missing time I won’t get back? Am I being selfish? Will they miss me?

And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all:

What if they don’t?

That last question feels different from the others. Because guilt about leaving is one thing. Discovering that the people you love can be perfectly okay without you is something else entirely.

My wife has said more times than I can count that she doesn’t know what she is going to do without our daughters. For her, I think leaving carries a different kind of weight.

Being a mother isn’t simply one of the things she does. Right now, it structures enormous portions of her life. Our daughters look for her when they’re hungry, tired, hurt, scared, or simply want Mommy. She knows their routines. She anticipates needs before they become requests. There are probably hundreds of small things she does for them every week that none of us notices because they have simply become part of how our family works.

And in a few hours, she is going to walk away from all of it.

For ten days, someone else will make the food. Someone else will handle bedtime. Someone else will respond when they cry.

My wife has wondered aloud what it will feel like when she isn’t doing those things. I don’t think she is only worried about missing our daughters.

There is something disorienting about stepping away, even temporarily, from a role that has become such a large part of who you are. What happens when, for a little while, nobody needs you to be the person you have become accustomed to being?

I know something about that feeling.

The Army has given me plenty of opportunities to leave home. And there is a strange realization that sometimes waits for you when you come back.

Everything was fine without you.

Life continued. Meals were eaten. Problems were solved. Routines changed. People laughed. Whatever responsibilities belonged to you were absorbed, reassigned, postponed, or simply figured out.

You come home to people who are happy to see you, but also to evidence that the world did not stop because you left it. There is enormous relief in that. There can also be something strangely painful about it.

Because many of us build at least part of our identities around being needed. Maybe that is especially true when we take care of other people.

There is meaning in being the person someone calls when something goes wrong. There is meaning in knowing how someone likes their food prepared, what settles them when they are upset, which blanket they need before they can sleep, or the particular way they want to be held when they get hurt.

Eventually, those ordinary acts of care become more than things we do. They become evidence of who we are to someone.

So when we leave and discover that someone else can do those things, it can expose a question we may not have realized we were asking:

If you don’t need me, what does that say about how much I matter to you?

I think that may be part of what makes separation difficult.

We tend to talk about separation from the perspective of the person being left. Will the children be okay? Will they miss us? Will they understand that we are coming back?

But there is another person in every separation.

The one who leaves.

And sometimes we need reassurance too.

We want evidence that our absence was noticed. We want to know there was a space where we normally would have been.

We want to be missed.

Maybe not because we want the people we love to suffer without us, but because being missed reassures us that our presence matters.

That is an uncomfortable thing to admit.

I want my daughters to be completely okay while I’m gone. And some small part of me will probably be hurt if they are completely okay while I’m gone.

Those two things can coexist.

Maybe that is because being needed and being important are not the same thing, even though it is remarkably easy to confuse them.

At one and three, our daughters still depend on us in enormous ways. But if we are doing this well, that dependence is supposed to change.

Our job is not to preserve it. Our job is to slowly make more of it unnecessary.

And maybe this trip is a very small version of that process.

For ten days, our daughters are going to discover that other people can take care of them. Someone else can make breakfast. Someone else can help when something hurts. Someone else can put them to bed.

Their routines may change. They may miss us. There may be difficult moments.

And the world will remain safe.

Mommy and Dada can leave. Mommy and Dada can come back. The relationship can survive the space in between.

Maybe separation is something all four of us are practicing.

My wife and I are practicing stepping away from two people who have become central to our identities. Our daughters are practicing being without the two people who have been central to theirs.

We may discover that they can be okay without our constant presence. They may discover that our absence does not mean they have lost us.

And perhaps all four of us will discover something important about love in the process:

Being apart is not the same thing as being disconnected.

I think there is something important in that for my wife and me beyond parenting too.

For ten days, neither of us will be responsible for the daily work of raising our daughters. We will still be Mommy and Dada. But for a little while, we will get to experience parts of ourselves that aren’t entirely organized around those roles.

Before there was Mommy and Dada, there was us.

And our marriage is part of the home our daughters are growing up inside. Taking care of that relationship is not something separate from taking care of them. Neither, I’m beginning to believe, is remembering that we are people outside of parenthood.

That does not require me to pretend this trip is somehow secretly for our daughters.

Some of it is for us.

We want to travel. We want to see extraordinary things. We want to experience parts of the world we haven’t seen.

And for ten days, we are choosing that experience even though choosing it means being away from our children.

I think I need to be able to say that without immediately trying to make it sound selfless.

Parenthood does not require every beautiful experience available to us to become something we must immediately give our children. Loving them completely does not require including them in everything.

I believe that.

And very soon, Disneyland Paris is probably going to test how much I believe it.

I know there will be things my daughter would love. Maybe I’ll imagine what she would say. Maybe I’ll see a little girl holding her father’s hand and wish my daughter were holding mine.

And I don’t think I need to talk myself out of that feeling. I don’t think enjoying the trip requires convincing myself that my daughters wouldn’t have enjoyed it too.

They might have. My oldest almost certainly would.

I can wish she were there and still be glad I went without her. My wife can miss being Mommy and enjoy temporarily not being needed as Mommy every minute of the day. We can miss our daughters terribly and still have an extraordinary time. Our daughters can miss us and still laugh, play, eat, sleep, and discover that their world remains safe while we are somewhere else.

Good decisions do not always come without a cost.

The house will wake soon. The quiet I’m sitting in right now will disappear.

My daughters will come out of the bedroom. There will be breakfast and diapers and questions and probably something that needs to be found even though it is directly in front of us. For a few hours, everything will feel like it normally does.

And then we will say goodbye.

My wife will have to walk away from the girls who have needed her every day of their lives. My daughters will have to watch Mommy and Dada leave. And I will have to do something that feels especially strange for a father who spends so much of his life wishing he had more time with his children.

I will choose to go.

For ten days, other people will feed them, comfort them, play with them, and put them to bed.

Their lives will continue. They will probably miss us. They will probably also have fun. And they will probably be okay.

I am trying to learn not to experience that as evidence that I matter less. Maybe loving people well means building relationships secure enough that they don’t need our constant presence to know how much they matter to us.

In a few hours, I’ll hug my daughters. I’ll probably hold them a little longer than usual. Then I’ll pick up our bags and walk out the door.

I believe they’ll be okay without us.

I’m just not sure I’m ready to find out what it feels like when they are.