Drinking alone

I would like to say that after a long day and finally getting the girls to sleep, I savor a cocktail and relax on the couch allowing myself to unwind while reconnecting with myself and the things, outside of my family, that I hold dear.  But that would be a lie.  A lie because for what seems like the 100th night in a row, I leave the dark and soft snoring sounds of the girls' room and step out into the blinding silence of the rest of the house. Drinking alone, while a treat on some evenings, gets a little played when it happens every night.  And every night, my husband, the chef, works late and doesn't get in before 9 or 10 PM.  I know that this is the story of so many families.  I am not saying anything that has not been said before.

Tonight, Virginie went to sleep crying for her father, "I wan' Papa.  I wan' my papa." I don't even tell him these things anymore.  It won't make him feel any better and there is not much he can do about it.  I hate it.  I stayed with her until she fell asleep, well until I woke up.  And I didn't feel any better about it when I dragged myself out of her room and into the light either. 

Sometimes I think they aren't getting enough with just me.  I get irritable and I yell unable to listen to one more "question" from Lily or one more demand for "boo boos" from Virginie.  I feel like shit because after prepping another dinner of asked for foods, neither of them will eat it and ask for, instead, Dora popsicles and popcorn.  I have forced them both to brush their teeth when they don't want to and tell them, no I don't want to hear/read/listen to whatever it is they are asking me about.  I ask for, sometimes demand, a few minutes just so Mommy can think, only to have them think 3 seconds is the minute I am asking for.  Unlike my parents when I was growing up, however, I then apologize profusely and do silly faces and silly hugs and wacky dances until it's time for bed when I pass out with them hoping they don't have to spend years in therapy because of their crazy mother.

The truth is I am not really angry at them.  They are exhausting, but what kid isn't?  I am really pissed that this is so not what I was expecting and I am just not sure what to do about it.  Didier can't change the program.  He is working for a company abroad that makes more demands on its very small foreign staff while letting the locals, covered by archaic and bullshit union laws, have the run of the place.  There is such abuse of the union's power here, any expat in Barbados can tell you about it, and foreign companies and workers have little recourse when dealing with them. 

Knowing it and living with it, however, are two different things.   My family suffers because the husband and father has to give 100% while staff does whatever it wants and a delusional company, hoping to see a profit in this crazy market in a country, really a region, that is showing how little it cares for tourists and tourism when that is its only real industry and how little it understands that there was/is a world economic crisis, makes ever increasing and certainly ridiculous projections.  To his credit, he has given everything he has in the face of insane amounts of BS, where I would already have gone out with a bang.  He works hard.  Any company can count on him and he always delivers.  It's my company, my family, that now sees him the least.

In the quiet, in the loneliness of this great house on a beautiful property on an island with 365 days of sunshine and tropical weather, I don't want to drink another cocktail by myself.  I don't want to be the only one who hears the stories, knows the names of friends, listens to the questions and concerns, finds Strawberry Shortcake's vest, hat, or shoes, goes ahead and makes the popcorn after dinner is turned down.  I don't want to go to all the parties, cocktail hours, beach dates with the two girls in tow all by myself.  And I really don't want to be alone without my husband every night. How could Barbados be beautiful to us if it means distance, work, struggle, and separation?  I only ask people to consider this as they demand love for this place from my tight, black piece of coal of a heart.  It is my family that I love and I don't want to lose us.


(c) Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.