Family

MacTroll has been traveling for work since 2002. It's been over eight years of him being gone at least two work weeks a month. And since we had a very long distance romance for six years before we moved in together, and he was a photojournalist (and news doesn't stop) for several years that we were in Northern Virginia, so we're used to having a lot of independence in our relationship.

He's gotten used to eating out, usually alone, for every meal. He's used to having someone pick up after him and wash his towels in hotels. He's used to adult activity. But when he comes home, he's superdad. And truthfully, X-man and I are the ones who have trouble adjusting our schedules to let him back in. Like MacTroll is used to a maid service, free wine and freshly baked cookies in business class and the airport folks in Savoy knowing him on sight and having his boarding pass preprinted for him, X-man and I are used to our own schedules. We know when the other one likes to eat, where we usually go, what's on the agenda for the week and how the bedtime routine is going to go. For the first 36 hours MacTroll is home there's an adjustment -- every time.

April was a crazy travel month. MacTroll's usual every other week got split up into traveling every week at least for three days, sometimes the full five. These situations usually make X-man and I go a bit nuts with each other. So, I start to plan meetups and invite people to dinner so that we're not totally in each other's faces all the time.

But the truth is that we miss MacTroll when he's gone. We don't want that period of adjustment to be there, but it is. And I wonder if we'll ever have a 8 to 5 situation where MacTroll goes to work and is home for dinner and to sleep in his own bed every night. I wonder if he'll ever be free to coach one of X-man's teams or help him with pre-algebra or to teach him to tie a tie. I wonder if I'll always have those kinds of duties because I'm the one who is consistently here.

I guess we're lucky that I'm not completely clueless regarding the characteristics that make a good man. But at the same time, I do not have the required gendered parts to really "model" those behaviors. I guess, he'll have to settle for modeling a good person. And that can't be entirely bad, right?