Solo Parenting is Hard

Lately Chris has been gone doing fly out job interviews. Which is awesome. Except that it's really hard.

I am so much better with him with me than I am as a single mom. Except for that rare day when I know I'm flying solo and have mentally geared up and I am an awesome mom. Then I crash and am cranky and impatient and tired. Or when the alarm doesn't go off for Chris's 4:55 shuttle, but Millie wakes up yelling just in the knick of time and kicks us into high gear. Once the adrenaline wears off and I fall back to sleep morning comes to soon. Kids don't nap. They fight, throw tantrums and cause trouble. It's all I can do to read our two verses of scripture, say prayers and put them in their beds. Then dinner dishes are waiting for me, along with Truman's bowl of potatoes and squash he threw all over the floor.

I am not used to doing this alone. (Thank goodness.) I'm used to being able to check in with Chris during the day.

I've been weighing it in my brain how lots of women do it full-time, and lots of women have it way harder than I do. But that doesn't make my hard less. It's still hard. Chris will be gone 8/10 days when this little stretch is over. He's basically coming home to get clean clothes, give me a bit of a breather and catch the next shuttle and flight, criss-crossing the country to opposing oceans. As soon as this round of fly outs is over there will (hopefully) be more.

Even if there aren't more Chris is teaching a night class second module this semester that meets twice a week. Conveniently placed in the middle of the week so he can book end the weeks with fly outs without having to miss class. And there's a dissertation to write. He was getting up at 4:30 the weeks before his proposal to get it finished. I feel like we're sprinting the last half of a marathon. (And I'm not a sprinter.) We have a school year ahead of us and it feels completely overwhelming.

I keep wishing we lived close to family so I could have someone who felt compelled to bail me out. Or that Chris was a dental or medical student and we lived in an apartment building with six other families in our exact situation. Or Chris was a business man making big bucks that I could spend to help myself (a maid, babysitters, cute clothes, etc). But we don't. We're graduate students living in our cozy little house in Indiana. And sometime I feel really alone. (Despite good friends.)

I'm writing this in the hopes that I remember clearer what the last year of a PhD program felt like. That when someone mentions their hard thing I don't try one-upping it with a "Oh, but when we were in graduate school..." or dismissing it with "It's not that bad! Get over it. I went through worse." I want to remember hard is hard. And once it's hard, it doesn't matter the degree of hard. Validating someone else's difficulties doesn't take away from my experience.

I can do hard things. Chris can do hard things. I am so grateful to be sending out a capable, socially adept and amazing husband for these interviews, because his role in this is grueling. I am very much looking forward to the PhD phase of life to be over.

Then the tenure clock starts...