>Vacation
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Ladies and gentlemen, the teens have left the building.
Consider this my vacation- Well, as much of a vacation as I’m going to get until hell freezes over and my mom agrees to watch the two little ones for a week. For nine straight days, the girls are visiting their mom and the hormone balance in this house has tipped from MAJOR OVERLOAD back to NORMAL. And oh, what a feeling.
Last night, Hubs and I enjoyed dinner together. We didn’t have to worry about what my oldest stepdaughter, who subsists on a strange diet of cottage cheese and cereal, was eating. We didn’t have to worry about whether my younger stepdaughter would deign to eat what I had cooked. We didn’t have to wonder why one or both of the girls wasn’t really speaking to us. We didn’t have to mentally steel ourselves for a last-minute request like, “When dinner’s over, can we drive to Memphis and spend the night outside the gates of Graceland? Pleeeeease?! No? WHY NOT?!” Hubs didn’t have to endure being treated like he was the most clueless man that ever walked the face of the earth. We simply ate. Dinner. It was peaceful… so very peaceful.
“This is so easy,” Hubs said.
“I know,” I replied. “We’re just two people eating dinner together. I forgot what that feels like.”
Of course, I’m exaggerating. A little. But I can think of no other way to describe the feeling of calm that I get for a couple of weeks a year when the girls visit their mom.
Does this mean I wish they lived elsewhere? Hell no. After about four days, I start missing them intensely. They’re funny and interesting and my life is richer having them in it. Plus, our family really doesn’t feel complete when they’re not here.
But I treasure these weeks off in a weird way, because they help me realize what a toll teenagers can take on our emotions. I’ve written before that when living with teens, it’s all too easy to slip into their way of thinking, and their drama, and to get incredibly upset and tense about what’s essentially nothing at all.
I’m lucky enough to get a big time out every so often, to take a step away and see my girls’ angsty ups and downs for what they are, and to remember what’s real and what’s simply imagined in the growing, changing, mixed-up brains of that fascinating specimen known as Girlus Teenagerus.
This post originally appeared on Parents.com.
