Friday, March 03, 2006 @10:44 PM
I’m back! In case you were wondering where I disappeared to…well I was out of town for a work trip. Don’t worry (or you should be more worried) coz I’m not shutting down the blog. I’m afraid that I’ll still be hanging around talking and talking here for quite some time. You just can’t get rid of me heh. : )
I was sent to a lab in another city to learn a technique by my boss for 4 days. A postdoc from my lab came along with me. She was late while I met her at the airport on the departure date. The first thing she told me me at the airport during the final call for boarding the plane, was she cried several times just thinking about leaving her kids and her husband behind for a few days! Yep, she was really late and we nearly missed the flight, though I could have boarded the plane and made it for the trip alone without her. Anyway, after we boarded the craft and the plane was getting ready to take off. Again, she mentioned how she already started missing her kids and her husband. I thought she was over-reacting a bit. She’s not going away for weeks, months or years. The trip, to be precise, was just 3.5 days. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll be seeing them this Friday evening.” “I know, but l can’t wait for the trip to end.” Huh? The biz trip was just started and you were already starting to count down? Oh well I just shook my head and reminding her that time passed quickly and would soon be Friday.
We had a tight schedule, working from 8am to 7pm with just a short lunch break for the past few days. But whenever we had a chance to chat, the postdoc would start talking how she missed her kids and husband. She’d been calling them every night (or they’d been calling her). And of course she would just talked more about them after putting down the phone and tears started to fill up her eyes. I tried to console her, “Come on, why not appreciate these few days being single and free without the taking care tasks?” Yet, I know my words were not helpful to her at all. And you know, it was so funny to see her kept looking at her watch during our return trip. “2 more hours to go…I would be seeing them at the airport.” I laughed.
I guess at this stage, I really couldn’t understand how difficult it is to leave your family; I mean your own family (that is your spouse and your young children) for a certain period of time. Well, I can sympathize that it must be very difficult to leave your beloved family for a long time, especially your kids who are still very small. But since I am not a mother and have no commitment to a family of my own yet, it is pretty difficult for me to grasp the missing family feeling. Yet, I can more or less understand married people who have responsibilities in taking care of their family. I’ve actually seen some married friends of mine who feel reluctant to get out of town or even go home later after work. I was told they wanted to rush home to see their kids and spouse. Even for my parents, though they had my grandmother to take care of us, whenever my dad was out for biz trips, I would find my mom calling up my dad very often to see how he was doing. She didn’t say she missed him but I could tell she’s not happy to see him leaving the family, be it just a few days.
Since I’m single, I have no problem in traveling around anytime anywhere I like; especially I’ve been away my parents’ home for a decade now. Therefore, even if I’m going away, I don’t feel that I’m “away” since I’m already away from my family. For the first few years, I would inform my parents, way before I planned for a trip so that they would not have to worry about me. Then subsequently I only left them a message just prior a trip. Nowadays I hardly update them with all my trips, unless it is a long trip. The only reason I do so is because I think it would be nice to let them know whereabouts I would be. I do not want to make them paranoid wondering where the heck their daughter has gone if they want to look for me all of a sudden. Anyhow, I had never bothered to call them up during all of my previous trips. And they had never complained about this. As such, this makes me bear lesser burden to go here and there freely and without much emotional attachment. I just took this for granted until during this trip. The postdoc who is a mother of two, who was feeling heartbroken to leave her two small children made me realize that I should appreciate the freedom being single.
Yet, if I am honest to myself; I would have to admit that strangely enough, there were moments I found myself thinking of you.
