Last Friday, the last day of Year Two, Term One, The Kid emerged from his classroom with a huge grin and some extra baggage: a bean plant he had been growing throughout the term in his science class. The other kids popped out with their own plants, in various stages of growth. A friend’s daughter lamented that her bean, for its part, had basically not done shit over the last few weeks: “Why is mine still beneath the dirt?! Why didn’t it GROW???”

Naturally, I was thrilled that TK’s little green stalk had made something of itself; that’s one less question I have to answer. It’s the small things, right? But not every growth experience yields similar results. Not every pathway through the muck leads to such visible length and light.

We arrived home and found a sunny place where the plant could continue living, and the next morning TK noticed that the bean had appeared to grow overnight. “It needs the moonlight too,” he concluded, his typical observational simplicity covering the depths beneath it; profundity masked by brevity.

I’m going “on holiday,” as they say here, in a week’s time, flying solo across the Pacific Ocean and most of the continental US to arrive in New York, where I’ll meet The Sis and give a talk, and a couple days after that we’ll hop down to Atlanta for me to briefly reunite with family, friends, and Super Target. The trip fills me with anticipation and anxiety, unsurprisingly: I can’t remember the last time I ventured through an airport without The Husband trustily holding my passport; nor can I remember the last time I sat inside a plane without a small hand tugging at me to go to the bathroom. I’ll be savouring every moment while counting them down until I see my three men’s faces again. It will be wonderful and tough; sunlight and moonlight.

One of my favourite (read: most outrage-inducing) parts of this journey is how people have stepped up to ask how TH will manage. I’m not talking about friends who offer to have the kids for a play or to check in; I’m talking about the acquaintances who ask whether they should bring meals by as if someone has DIED, or the ones who question if perhaps TH needs some live-in help? Like a child carer or cook or maid? Turns out that in 2019, some are still aghast at the thought of a man taking care of his own children solo for a spell. I love TH and will acknowledge at every turn the incredible husband and father he is (unless that turn occurs at 6 pm on a weekday and he hasn’t arrived home from work yet…), but do I think he should be immortalised as some kind of GD folk hero because he steps up to give me a mental break and mind his own offspring? I most decidedly DO NOT.

Props to TH for changing hundreds of diapers compared to my own dad’s ONE (love ya, Dad) and for making his own sandwiches, but let’s not contact the Nobel committee just yet when sisters have been doing it for themselves for centuries without an effing Meal Train delivery schedule, JUST SAYING.

That said (and now with me searching for a place to live for the next week), I’m interested to see what shape everyone will be in upon my return. The boys, for their part, will miss me while having a wrestling, physical, nugget-filled good time with the Fun Parent. TH will miss me too, but likely will enjoy leaving his half-empty water bottles wherever he damn well pleases and allowing cabinets and drawers to remain open whenever he wants.

Yin and yang. Tit and tat. When one side of the equation is missing, the whole thing gets lopsided and starts to crumble. When TH was away a few months ago, everything was in its place around our place, but we were woefully incomplete and–even though the laundry didn’t pile up–we wouldn’t have lasted much longer without him. I need the calm to my uptightness, the blue to my red, the “it’s fine” to my “EVERYTHING IS FALLING APART.” I need the kid whose favourite word is penis and the one whose favourite is why; the one who demands I watch him as he watches his iPad and the one who pushes me away (“But I still love you!”). I need a TK and an LB, and the world does too: TK’s friends need their calm port in a storm and LB’s need a PJ Masks-enthused dance partner. And they need each other: LB clinging to TK’s neck and begging him for a hug (“Brothers of love ALWAYS HUG!”); TK teaching LB about manual versus automatic transmission along with all the other nuances that people can overlook while dancing to PJ Masks.

We all need plants that grow slowly, beneath the soil, and those that emerge through it early, when we’re barely ready.

I returned from a run this morning and, keyless, rang our doorbell. Cue the pitter patter of small yet growing feet, the door handle jangling, and LB’s face appearing through the screen. “Mom, I need to tell you something!” was his greeting, before exclaiming frustratedly, “How do I get this OPEN?” I heard TH patiently (what’s that, this patience thing you speak of?) prod TK to help his brother, and seconds later, TK’s face appeared and the door was quickly opened. As I stepped forward, they both grinned their particular grins at me, leading me inside to my place, where TH waited. To home.