The Cord

by Patti

I just gave permission to my husband to kidnap our daughter.

To another country.

It was even notarized!

I have to make jokes, you see.

They mask the severe separation anxiety that I have been feeling since my husband asked me if he could take an overseas trip alone with our daughter to visit his family.

We have been going to Argentina together nearly every year since we met 22 years ago, and normally, I would go this time, too. But money has been tight and we have had to guard our spending this year. Since it’s his family, and they would much rather fawn over their granddaughter than me, I’m the obvious leave-behind.

This will be the first time ever since our daughter was born TEN YEARS ago that she goes away on a plane without me. Anywhere. And for her inaugural ‘without a mother’ trip, she is going OVERSEAS. 6,000 miles away for TEN DAYS.

Logically, I know she will be fine. After all, she will be with her father, who happens to be a good father. And that father is my husband, and we are all good and happy on the marriage front so there is no reason why he shouldn’t come back on his own free will.

I put the “kid” in kidnapping because my silly little jokes help suppress my darkest fear: that something will happen and I won’t be there. Be there for what, I don’t know. Will I be able to stop the fever from forming with my mere presence? Will I be able to stop the plane from crashing? Will I be able to stop anything other than her simply daily complaints of “I’m Hungry” or “I’m Bored”? And my husband, her father, can certainly do that.

When my husband first brought up the idea, I instantly squashed it. I didn’t even allow the thought to enter my head for one single second. He backed off.

A couple of months later, he brought it up again, this time more emphatically. He wants to bond with her. He wants to share the experience with her. He wants to give his mother, who aches to be with her grandchildren (all 3 live in the U.S.) more than distance allows, the gift of our daughter for so many glorious days in a row. He said, “It’s not about you, or me, or even S… I want to do this for my MOM.”

I thought about it – pushing away my own fears – and wondered to myself: Would he stop me? Would he even question me?

No. He wouldn’t. He never has when it comes to our daughter.

Didn’t I owe him the same thing?

And so, through stomach-dropping fear, I told him I would support it, but that he had to understand and respect that I was going to be freaking the fuck out pretty much the whole entire time – before and during - and that it had nothing to do with how I felt about him as a father. It was a motherly pull I couldn’t possibly explain to him, and even if I could, I didn’t expect for him to fathom it.

In return, he asked me to be supportive out loud with our daughter regarding the trip, because she, too, still has separation anxiety when it comes to being away from me. I warned him that she might cry, that she might protest, and that I would do my best to make it sound fun for her, but that he had to respect the feelings that happen around it, whatever they may be.

The day he told her, she immediately burst into tears. She said she refused to go without “mommy”, which of course fed into my mother-lion instincts to protect her from any kind of pain or suffering. But I lied my ass off, telling her how much FUN! they were going to have, how cool it would be to make the trip on the plane with just her Papi.

“But you always cuddle with me on planes, mom!”

I do. I do cuddle with her on planes.

“Papi will cuddle with you, too”, I assured her. “It will be different, but it will be great!” I promised. To myself, as much as to her.

It has been more than a month since the decision was made, and now the tickets are officially purchased, the seats selected, the “Travel Authorization” forms signed and notarized. The plans are being made.

S has gotten more and more excited about the whole thing, sharing in the thrill that their appearance on her abuela’s doorstep will be a surprise. And I am getting used to the idea, too. My husband told me to take the time to work out, hang out with friends, to not worry about coming home from work at a certain time on the dot…. And you know what? There is a little thrill in that.

I have this vision in my head of the day they fly away: I will have one end of a very long cord tied to my wrist, and the other end will be looped around her wrist. The cord will stretch across the sky – all 6,000 miles of it - and it will pull and tug at our wrists at times, but it will just keep stretching and stretching, giving us both the freedom to wander, but allowing us to stay connected at the same time.

That cord may only be imaginary, but for me, it is very, very real.