I have an amazing job. Amaaaazing. In a couple of weeks, they are sending me overseas for six weeks to advance a project I’m working on. I will be travelling through Scotland and England, spending my days researching and writing on things I’m passionate about. Dream come true?
Well, not exactly. You see, I have two primary-school-aged children who can’t come with me. They will be back here in Australia with their dad and his partner, safe and loved and in their routines as much as possible. I will see them on Skype, daily I hope. Back when I planned the trip, six weeks felt like it would be a cinch. I even wondered if I should have gone for two months. But now, looking down the barrel at the airport goodbye, I just feel sick.
The warring impulses inside me keep me awake at night. First, of course, is the guilt. Blinding guilt. What am I doing, leaving my babies? I can feel their umbilical cords again, pulling on my insides. Should I change to a less fulfilling project that requires no overseas travel, even if it harms my career? Should I take a less exciting job while they are at school? How selfish of me to want to advance my career, expand my mind, actualise my self. But then there’s the other impulse: the airy joy that I will be free and out in the world, growing and blossoming and feeling the value of my work. I love work. I always have. Good work seems to me one of the most important experiences a human can have. Travelling and working on this project makes me want to cry with excitement.
I haven’t asked the children what they want. Deciding on the future of my career is way too much responsibility to place on a child, and I know what they’d say anyway: a big, long “no” like the ones I get when I try to send them to school on rainy days or make them eat cauliflower. Instead, I’ve said that we will be apart, that we will miss each other and be sad, but that we will survive it and be back together soon enough.
The opinions of others also hold their sway, and I’ve heard them all. From “half your luck ” to “it’s work, you have to go” to “can’t you shorten the trip a little?” to the muttered “I suppose, if you must” (usually delivered with faint disapproving frown). I have also felt these opinions myself, sometimes all of them in the space of a few minutes.
The problem is, there are too few role models to call on. We understand that men go away for business; I saw my own father go away for work numerous times. But I’m desperate to meet women who have to go away for business. Desperate for a mother to tell me what to expect, what a reasonable time away might be, how my children might react, how to deal with the haters.
Sometimes, when I’m churning through all this at three in the morning (great preparation for the jet lag that awaits me at the other end), I have a fantasy. In it, my daughter is a grown woman with children of her own. She is offered a six-week opportunity overseas for work; it is exciting, career building, but she knows her children will miss her terribly.
And then I imagine she doesn’t even ask for my advice. Because she already knows it’s okay.
Kim Wilkins has published over 20 novels and now teaches writing and literature at University of Queensland. You can read more about her here.
Have you ever left your children alone for an extended period? Did your parents ever leave you while they went away?
Top Comments
I know this thread is really old but I am just going to write down my situation because I need to let out some of the emotion. Sorry Mamamia. I have been away from my children, 8, 6 and 1.5 for a month now while my husband stays home and cares for them. They are all in Australia, I am in the UK. We are attempting to move back to the UK.
I am looking for work to fulfil the requirements newly set by UK immigration to get a visa for my husband. I am the one with the British passport so I need to earn the money. I was not going to be able to do that in Australia, earn over $37,000 per annum, but maybe I could in London so that is why I am here. So there is pressure to find a job (I work in costume, bridal and dressmaking and a bit of retail, ha,ha), pressure to find a house. The added bonus of having very little support and deeply missing my family and being on my own after nearly 10 years of family life and noise, is making it hard to come across as confident in interviews and I often don't mention I have a family at all, which is so difficult. It is the biggest lie even if it is only omission. I have never done anything so difficult and draining (I have been to Egypt on my own) and yet I must and I feel I can't go back home to Australia as I will just feel even more stuck there. And a complete failure as a parent and as a person of worth because I can't get work. I still have hope that I will find work here but the longer I take, the longer it will be till I see my family and my heart breaks a little more. All I want is a home for my family, ffs. In Australia it has become virtually impossible to achieve this. Maybe Old Blighty will give us that chance. I can only try. My husband would probably express similar views only about lack of support within the community for stay at home dads in Australia. Talk about an unspoken societal norm for ostracism.
We are an exceptional and, possibly, quite crazy family. This is a crappy reality I never thought would happen to us. I miss my family so much.
I sounds like you have the perfect setup to do this, I'm surprised anyone would have an issue with it. Skype is fantastic and makes being away so much easier. Have fun!