I’m not your standard Mama. I curse around my kids when others cover their children’s ears. I teach them Beatles and Rolling Stones where others play high-pitched-children’s voices-singing-it’s-supposed-to-be-endearing. (And I did NOT introduce the Wiggles to them, thank you very much. The kids introduced them to me, and after years of hating, I have actually grown to enjoy that one single kiddie group. And also one song by Raffi. But that’s it.) I’m kind of a control freak about things other parents don’t care much about (and I totally don’t care about the things I probably should prioritize.) I’m a liberal whose kids go to private schools and would even if they didn’t have autism. And I am absolutely not the clingy type.

So it horrifies me to realize that it has been at least five, possibly eight years since I took more than a night away from my children. (And then only one since Sam was born, and that was with Scott.) Scott travels sometimes with work for a weekend. Rarely. But I have never really taken a trip by myself since becoming a Mom.

Until now.

I’m leaving tomorrow for four, count them four days and three nights. My Auntie Em’s daughter is getting married, and this is a wedding I don’t want to miss. I already had to miss one friend’s wedding this year, and it killed me that I had to pick which one I could go to. I so wanted to attend both. And I’m so grateful to be at least able to attend one.

And, even more exciting, I’m a GODMOTHER, and I get to stand up in church in front of God and all his disciples and promise that I’ll never let Jake down. (And I won’t, either.) (However, if you hear about a Catholic church getting struck by lightning this weekend in Northern Kentucky, someone please see if my body can be retrieved from the wreckage.) This is beyond cool. My friends Genie and Mike have actually got two godmothers and one godfather for this baby. I’m the… I think the official term is non-same-religion godparent. Or something like that. And anyway, the godfather is off being a soldier, so my boobs and I get to stand in for him! It’s like being both in one. Genie calls it my Victor/Victoria stint. (Only nobody’s gonna mistake me for Julie Andrews.)  It’s causing the deacon in charge of facilitating this thing some real distress. Nevermind her.

This is something my agnostic butt wouldn’t miss for the world. Genie has stood by me at times when almost nobody else would. She has been my friend since fifth grade, and I can’t wait to hold her baby in my arms and promise to love it forever.

To triple the fun, I’m staying with another friend. Jenny and I have been friends since preschool, and it’s been far far FAR too long since we got to just hang out. Our parents used to gripe about our incessant sleepovers when we were five and six. But GUESS WHAT Mom and Dad, we were pre-making up for practically the rest of our lives.

So I’m really excited to be going.

But my anxiety level is also through the roof. Because I’ve never left the kids for this long. I’ve never totally abandoned Scott for a weekend. He ditches me as rarely as possible because these two require two parents most of the time. It is neither practical nor sane for one of us to plan a long weekend away.

And I don’t understand this emotion. Who the fuck am I? It’s not like I feel Scott is incompetent. He’ll cope OK. Or at least do as well as I do when I’m pulling a few days as a single Mom. This kind of separation anxiety … it’s the kind of thing other parents feel. Not me.

Because I am not your standard Mama.

And I desperately need this break.

Surely I’ll be fine once I get on the road tomorrow.

Yes. I think I will. Now that I’ve written it down, the excitement is starting to trump the anxiety already.

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Yes, I have an Auntie Em. You don’t? Didn’t everybody’s mother and her best friend watch The Wizard of Oz obsessively every year, to the point that they don’t know why they weren’t named Dorothy? Oh. Just me? Well. Learn something each and every day. Take me back to the blog

About jesterqueen: Jessie Powell is the Jester Queen. She likes to tell you about her dog, her kids, her fiction, and her blog, but not necessarily in that order.