I’m going on a girl’s trip!  

I haven’t gone anywhere for almost exactly two years.  No really, I checked the calendar.  We went on a family vacation in Florida in September of 2019.  That was the last time I traveled.  My last girls trip was August 2018.  It’s TIME!

I will be away from my family for 4 whole days for the first time in over three years.  It’s going to be phenomenal.  I need it.  My girlfriends need it.  

It’s also going to be hard.  

I have NEVER in the 8 years that my kids have been in some kind of school, gone away during the school year and certainly not on days where they would have school.  This particular trip involves three days of school and countless other activities that my husband (who is amazing, but….) will have to figure out on his own.

Yes, he’s capable.  Yes, he is their parent too.  Yes, everyone will survive.  But, as I started to prepare for this trip I really began to realize and take stock of *all the things* that live in my head that I just know, and do, and handle. There is a constantly streaming checklist to get the kids ready in the morning and out the door.  I’m preparing for the evening (and the next day) each afternoon.  When I get the kids home from school it’s another litany of tasks.  Keeping track of homework and who has a test on which day and what kid said they don’t have enough socks, and who has decided they don’t like xyz food in their snack.  When it’s bedtime there’s another list.  Did I forget anything?  Is the laundry done? Do the kids have enough clean masks?  Are their chromebooks charging?

This is just a typical school day and it only relates to the kids and school.  This does not include anything related to after school activities (the messaging and tetris and carpooling), or food (groceries, cooking, dishes, planning), or the dog, or doctors visits, or house maintenance, or ALL the emails from the school and forms to be filled out.  And lord help you if you have a 9-5 job on top of all of this.  

I do have systems in place to help me, and the kids, do this daily shuffle.  I have lists and calendars and chore charts (I feel like Mama Bear from the Berenstain Bears when I say this).  And both kids are *pretty* good at checking and following these lists.  We’re getting into the routine.  However, they still need to be “managed” and reminded and double checked. And no, it’s not all written down.  There isn’t a playbook that I can just hand off to my husband when I leave for this trip.

And so it’s hard.  I’ll do my best to prepare.  I’ll make sure he has lists for each day.  I’ll remind him to do the laundry on a certain day so that my daughter has a clean uniform for her softball game.  I’ll make sure there are enough groceries, prepared foods for easy lunch making, and clean masks before I go.  I’ll try to make it as easy as possible so that things don’t fall apart while I’m gone.  

But things will fall apart.  He is not me.  He doesn’t do all the things that I do, in part because isn’t even AWARE of all the things.  And this isn’t to say that he doesn’t have his own mental load when it comes to our household.  We absolutely divide and conquer.  I generally have nothing to do with exterior house maintenance.  Yard included.  The major car maintenance falls on him — I handle regular oil changes and small things, but if a big repair needs to happen, that’s his department.  I handle the daily /monthly finances, but he’s in charge of long term planning.  It’s actually great.  We are REALLY good at the “divide and conquer” thing and we know our strong suits (and pet peeves) when it comes to household management.  It’s lovely.

Until I’m not home for a few days. 

The difference between his contributions and my contributions is that, in general, mine are critical to the daily and maybe even hourly functioning of everyone’s lives.  Eating.  Having clean clothes.  Getting to and from after school activities.  Homework getting done.  General hygiene.  

If he’s gone for a few days, there is very little difference other than his physical absence.  The grass might get a little longer than normal.  Something might break and just stay broken until he gets back — assuming it’s nothing necessary for survival.  But no one’s day is affected if he doesn’t log in to check the status of our retirement account.  That’s not really a deal breaker on the day to day.

I don’t want to stereotype, but I do think it’s mostly moms that carry this mental load.  Working moms, stay at home moms, adult caregivers who take on the role of “mom.”  Maybe it’s just part of the definition of the word.  I even asked my husband to verify this bias and he confirmed my suspicions.  He does not think about any of these daily things. In part because he doesn’t have to and we’ve set up the system this way.  I can ask him to do a very specific task within the realm of daily “things” and he will do the task as defined and think absolutely nothing more about how it fits into the rest of the tetris.  Done and gone from his mind.

And it’s not necessarily a bad thing — there are things that I don’t have to think about either.  Things that don’t take up a millimeter of brain space for me. 

And so, all this to say.  I need this girl’s trip.  A lot.  I need a break from this mental load.  The constantly streaming checklists.  The litany of unnamed and unknown tasks that magically and seamlessly get completed.  And once I’m on that plane I will one hundred percent let go of all of it.  Because I can’t control what does or doesn’t happen when I’m gone.  And I need the break.  I need the self-care.  And no one will die.

But it’s still hard.