How many days apart from your children does it take to miss them?

I pondered that question as I boarded my flight.
Actually in truth, I pondered it as I stood in line, fifty deep, waiting to check in on my Tiger Airways flight. I noticed, with some mild amusement that I wasnt stressed out of my brain, or feeling adrenaline coursing through my body. Airport queues, specifically long airport queues are generally torture for me.
And I wondered as I stood there, all zen like, what was different about this queue, this long, long line that I stood in? Why was it that I didnt feel like the top of my head was about to explode and steam come pouring forth from my ears?
And of course, the answer was blindingly obvious.

I had no children with me.

Richard had dropped me at the departures gate and I'd kissed my three little gremlins goodbye (whilst they stayed firmly strapped in their car seats). I briefly hugged my husband, wished him well, told him where I kept the secret stash of vodka and then turned to face the sliding doors of Sydney airport.
Like Aladin's Cave they silently slid open, and I walked through.
The hum of the building's airconditioner provided a white-noise cloak around me as I made my way to join the world's longest queue.
This is what happens when you are required to be at check in two hours prior to departure, there are a lot of people waiting. But I felt no angst, no irritation, and certainly, I felt no need to delicately shove the person in front of me so that we might move a little faster to the front of the queue.
No, I stood in a zen like trance, enjoying, neigh, delighting in the calmness.
Which made me wonder.
How long would it be before I missed them?
How long would it be before my heart started to ache and my arms want to reach out and hold them?
I stood in line and moved one person further along.
Tick tock.
Nope.
Not missing them.
Thirty minutes later I was checked in and drinking a coffee.
No children to crawl up on the table to dismantle the sugar container.
No children to fight over who gets to hold the salt shaker and who is going to use the pepper grinder.
No arguments over who gets to eat the last piece of banana bread.
I with almost glutonous abandoment, devoured my entire chocolate muffin to myself.
No sharing MY muffin with greedy, noisy offspring.
Ah, I let my body sigh to itself and appreciate the implicit difference between coffee at the airport with three children in tow, and coffee at the airport on my own.
Zen, I'd move past zen. I was now in emotional release stage 4, I was crying with joy at the simply pleasure of enjoying a cafe latte without having to gulp the scolding hot coffee down in order to vacate seat and move children on before the chaos broke out.
I put my finger out and picked up the last chocolate crumb on the plate.
Did I miss them yet?
Not. On. Your. Life.

By the time my plane had landed, I was rather intrigued with this concept of many hours or days or perhaps weeks (dare I even suggest months?) it would take for me to miss my children.
And I felt guilty, I mean genuinely guilty when I realised, I perhaps could easily go a week, without a second thought about them.
I suspected, and I mean this in a dark way, I suspected I could probably go several weeks without missing them.
I suspected, well I suspected I should audition for Masterchef next time around and become a contestant that is forced by the nature of the show to be absent from her family for three months.
And that thought of being away from home. The thought of spending three months in a Harbourisde mansion with the other contestants, also taken forcibly from their homes, without their children, well it warmed me. Note: one did not delve further into fantasy, one obviously needs to be able to cook to audition for Masterchef and if nothing else I'm astute enough to realise that preparing Two Minute Maggi Noodles would not be enough to wow any Australian Food Critic.
However the idea of being MIA, to not be responsible for little people.
To not worry about dinners, lunches, snacks, nappies, bedtimes, baths, reading books, car ferrying, play date organising, pram parking, shopping, cleaning, washing, to be forcibly removed from well, my life, sounded...
*she says very very quietly so that no-one can hear*
Well frankly, it sounded like my idea of Heaven.

And then mother guilt kicked in.
Grabbed me by the goolab jamonds and shook me.
You cant expect to be away from your children for three months and not miss them!
But I strongly suspected I could.
I strongly suspected I could do three months, and then do another three without even stopping to catch my breath.
I realised, in all probability that joy I'd felt, the joy of thinking of a lengthy absence from them, made me a bad mother.
But it's not hard to fall into the bad mother catagory these days.
You used to be able to beat your children, starve them, send them to bed without any dinner and stick them up chimneys, and still be considered a good mum.
Not so these days.
If it's not organic. If it's not sugar free. If it's not parenting like you're negotiating on behalf of the United Nations, well then you're buggering up your job. These days you can read every child raising book in Dymocks and still get it wrong. If you put your child in childcare, if you hire a nanny, if you raise them at home, if you leave them to cry as babies, or if you carry them around in a sling all day, if you breastfeed, if you dont breastfeed, if you home school, if you co-sleep, if you put baby in a different room from birth, if you start solids too early, if you start them too late, if you yell at them, if you slap them, if you talk to them like their grown ups, if you talk to them like employees, if you teach them to read too early, if you teach them to read too late, if you help them every step of the way or you leave them to sort it out on their own, if you let them call you by your first name, if you make them call you mum or dad... doesnt matter which you pick, you are labelled a bad Mum.

Fortunately I was a bad teenager, so I'm familiar with the role.

It's not that I dont love my children, I do.
It's just that I see being away from them as an exceptional opportunity to be free of the great big ball and chain that is clasped around my ankle. And God, what I wouldnt give for a few days out of that detention centre.

And so I pondered this question with my own mother as we drove from Adelaide airport.
I never understood these women who couldnt go out at night and leave their kids with a babysitter because they would "MISS THEM."
God, for the chance to miss them!
For the chance to feel that stiring in the loins, the mother tiger feeling of wanting to be there to love and protect, instead of the adolescent desire to flee.

"I wonder how long it would take for me to miss them?"
"Who?"
"The kids."
"Oh you'll miss them by this afternoon." my Mum happily announced.
Really?
"I strongly suspect I wouldn't miss them by the end of the week!" I defiantly declared.
"Well you're tired, it's a big job bringing up three children so close in age. You need this break. And it's only for one night. You'll see them tomorrow." And Mum patted me on the knee. All would be right with the world after a hot dinner and good nights sleep.
(Mum never did learn the benefits of liberal doses of vodka).

But the question continued to resonate inside me.
Mostly in the sense that I was wondering how to test the question.
How for instance would Richard feel if I were to ring up and say that I wanted two weeks away?
That way, not only would I be able to test hypothosis, I'd also be able to have two weeks away.
Do other Mother's think like this I wondered?
And then I realised. We Mother's dont like to talk about escaping our families. That the idea of being away from our kids is a joyful idea. We dont like to look like we're not coping, or even that we might enjoy time away from our offspring to recapture who we are again.
And then I paused.
Perhaps other Mothers dont talk about it because they don't feel that way?
Maybe everyone else is happy in their mother utopia, they're totally into 'the little people'. They're rocking out motherhood and feel no need to escape, to run for the hills, to liberally apply vodka.

I shelved my concerns and focused on the reason for my trip. To meet my new nephew. Little Callum, little 6 day old, I'd forgotten how tiny they come, Callum. I think it's because he's my sister's baby that I want to wrap him up and take him home with me. I know I want to take her other child home. He has warmed my heart since I first held him as a baby, I held him so tightly that first time. I'd lost my third child, a rather intense miscarriage, a few days after he was born. And so I've always felt a special bond with him. That as my baby left the planet, his soul entered. And I never felt jilted by that, instead, I felt really lucky, blessed, to hold a little bubba, and a gorgeous blue eyed creature in my arms, so soon after saying goodbye to my own yet to be born baby.

I stood holding baby Callum and felt that singing in my heart that you get when you hold a newborn. And I cuddled him closely and pat pat patted his bum until his little cries dropped off and he was soon sleeping peacefully in my arms.
And I mused as I held this dear little body in my arms, how funny it was, because in truth, I'm not much of a baby person. Not terribly fond of them. I much prefer them when they walk and talk and you can have a laugh, pour a glass of wine and dicuss politics with them. Ella isn't fully au fait with the political situation and Kevin Rudd doing backflips on ETS's but she understands the wine pouring bit, and the posturing and the gesticulating. And I suspect by the time she's 6, well I suspect she'll have some fairly interesting views on both the wine growing regions of New Zealand and The Greens.

After taking a hundred photographs, which I also found amusing, funny how a girl can claim not to like babies yet feel drawn to taking enough photos to fill ones iphone. And then it was time to go, Mum, Dad and I kissed all nephews, sisters and husbands goodbye and headed out to lunch.
Dad, Mum and I all had a laugh about how long I thought it would take for me to miss my own children.
Again, I was sure, as I sipped my cold reisling, sans enfants, sans chaos, sans having to order food that is kiddie friendly, without chilli, without gorgonzola, I was sure, I could become accostomed to lunching out with adults and enjoying the peace and quiet of the sophisticaiton that comes with only discussing adult topics and not refereeing arguments between three and five year olds.
And as I sipped my wine I recounted a rather amusing Lola story.
Which lead the waitress to chime in about her own son.
And almost 45 minutes later we were still discussing her son, my next Ella story and finishing with a little ditty I had on Cuba.
God, how nice to be without kids I mused as I finished my plate of spicey blue swimmer crab.
How nice.

On the car ride home to my parents' house I told them all about Lola organising the kids at preschool to sit and watch her perform a dance. The preschool teachers said Lola had entertained the entire group for over an hour, and had become rather annoyed when another child had decided he too wished to dance for the group. In no uncertain terms she had put him in his place and told him to bugger off. In fact I told them, Lola just that day had told me that her zip was buggered and could I fix it.
We all laughed heartily. Nothing like listening to a three year old use words like 'bugger' in context.
Then I told them that I was going to have to stop using the F word. Basically because Cuba's second word was 'FUCK'.
And that he repeated it in rapid sussesion whenever he could,
'FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.'
Ah they mused, they knew eventually their wayward daughter would need to clean up her act.
We discussed how Ella had in her early years also used the F word.
The time she'd asked a man, "To get out of the fucking way."
And the man and I, both shocked, looked dumbly at Ella.
And all I could think to say was "PLEASE. You say, "Get out of the fucking way, PLEASE."
And Lola when she was two, as I heard her little squeeky voice coming through the baby monitor, "Ella! Stop fucking whinging!"
Yes, it was high time this trollop of a mother, stopped pretending she was a rebel without a cause, stopped clamining 'accidental parenthood', and started acting like a proper Mummy. A decent Mummy.
Perhaps I should also give up vodka.

Well there was no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, I just needed to address the prolific nature of my profanities. We could hardly have Cuba out there swearing his head off. It just wasnt seemly.

So we pulled into the driveway.
And I wandered into the house that I grew up in.
And my Mum wondered off to make us all a cup of tea.
"I suspect", she said, "that whilst you think it would take you several weeks to miss them, that you dont realise, that you havent stopped talking about them since you got off the plane."
I blinked.
Could that be right?
She continued, "And what's more, each time you mention them, your face lights up, and your eyes shine."
"Oh that's just sleep deprivation Mum. You get shiny eyes after FIVE FUCKING YEARS of no sleep!"
I got the Mum look that only mothers can give their children when they say the F WORD.
And I sipped my tea thinking.
Could I honestly have spent this entire time talking about them non stop?
And then I piped up, "Actually speaking about speaking about children non stop, Lola, honestly that child does not pause for breath. You know they were sitting in the back of the car last week...."

And I finshed my tea, enjoying the fact I didnt have to get up and wipe anyones bum, that no one was going to interupt me to get them a juice, or make them a sandwhich , or change the tv channel or get them their pencils...
I sat and enjoyed the fact I was sans enfants.
Even if I hadnt stopped talking about them since I'd arrived.