Taking a break from family life

I have discovered that sometimes the key to having a happy family life is to briefly leave the family. I’m not talking anything drastic here, just a short foray into the wider world without children hanging on your legs, partner’s wondering why we’re looking in this shop again, and nappy bags clanging off your shoulder.

 

I’m guessing there are a lot of other parents out there like me; when you’re not at work you’re with the kids having conversations about why you can’t have mayonnaise on fruit loaf or watch movies until midnight. Then you’re at work again.

 

Last week I broke routine to visit two of my closest friends who always visit me but who I hardly ever visit due to the family factor. Being a one car family, my partner dropped me to the bus stop while my youngest sobbed that she wanted to go on the bus as I waved a guilty goodbye.

 

My cloud of guilt at this evening of abandonment evaporated over the hour long journey. Ah, the amazing peace of an evening bus to the city! Twenty silent adults, countryside gliding by, the sheer bliss of not being able to do anything, not being asked to do anything.  Who needs a day at the spa when you’ve got Bus Eireann?

 

And then, an evening of conversation that wasn’t punctuated by requests for juice or interrupted by the need to prevent a game of toss the teddy at the telly. A spare bedroom where I could sleep like the dead, knowing that I’d not wake to the cries of mum, Mum, MUM.

 

A morning of lolling around with coffee, a wander through the city without keeping a tight grip on a small hand that wants to dart towards the ever fascinating danger of escalators. Window shopping without the accompaniment of the teenage song that has two choruses: requests for money and moans of boredom.

 

And then, strangely enough, I missed those things and got an earlier bus back, bags filled with little presents for my lovely little moaners. I felt content, eager to be going home.

 

Maybe sometimes you need to get a little distance, to see how much you have.

Daisy Wilson is a freelance writer who lives and works in West Cork. Mum to an almost-teenager and a toddler who is striding through the terrible twos with a glint in her eye, life is noisy, fun and covered in fingerprint marks.