It was time to tell my mountain boy husband goodbye again today. He travels to the North Slope of Alaska to work two weeks of every month. He, and the other great PA's, run one of the many clinics at Prudhoe Bay, caring for the oil workers, citizens of AK and anyone else who walks through the doors asking for help.
Like many dads and husbands right now, he has been forced to search for work outside our town. We miss him a lot when he's gone. But since our family has been doing this for a couple of years now, we kind of fall into a "when Dad's gone" routine. It's not always pretty but it works for the most part.
He asked me lately if I was secretly glad that he was off to work again. He said that he'd heard field workers mumble that their spouses sometimes were glad to see them go back when the two week hitch home was over. He wondered if I was ready for him to go back, too.
I told him that I was never ready to be without him. And that I try to do things that filled the holes of time left in my life while he was gone. Big, holes of time. I didn't think he believed me at first. So I smothered him with kisses. He seems to believe me now but pretends not to so he can get more kisses before he leaves. His pretending is pretty convincing.
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