He gets out late. There’s traffic due to the rain. It’s already dark, almost dinner time already, and he hasn’t been home for about ten hours. He’s missing his family - his wife, the older child, the baby - but he’s so tired and ready to just collapse and go to bed. A full day of work and more to come at home, drudgery of a different nature.

A tantruming toddler, battling over dinner - what chair will he sit in, what plate will he use, how many bites will he eat, how many times will he scream, “No! I want Mommy to do it”? A fussy baby - cranky and tired from naps that were too short, unwilling to be held by anyone but his mother because she is the most familiar. And the mother, herself? Cranky. Angry about his lateness, tired from a long day, also just waiting to collapse, bitter and resentful about a lack of help that is beyond his control.

Being a stay at home mom is hard, no doubt. But as much as I complain and feel sorry for myself about my difficulties, when I think about what my husband does every day, I am humbled and so very appreciative. He drives home for an hour after a long day of work and rolls in to find everyone is approaching their threshold. We are at our worst at dinnertime, meltdown time; it’s the scene of an accident. And he is stuck on the side, trapped between trying to help and not wanting to make things worse by getting in the way.

Sam, almost three, often insists that I do everything for him because that is what he’s used to from our days together. My husband believes Sam gets angry at him for going to work. When he comes home, Sam often frowns at him, sometimes he even yells at him, acting out on his hurt or just responding to a change in our normal pace. Robby is so attached to me that often I am the only one who can calm him and keep him happy. He often cries when other people hold him. My husband has to watch his children, who he has missed all day, deny him the privilege of participating. And that is the time he gets with us each day, the hour and a half before bedtime. That’s all.

Occasionally he gets some interaction with the kids in the morning, on those days where everyone is awake before he leaves, but that’s not necessarily any better. Either the kids are awake too early and are therefore cranky, making me irritable and exhausted from the start, causing all of us to act much like we do at the end of the day. Or, and this might be even worse, all goes well in the morning and everyone is pleasant. But then when he has to leave for work he has to face Sam, who wants him to stay because he has been so happy to see him for that extra period of time: “I don’t want you to work; I want you to stay home.” At which point my husband has no choice but to hug and kiss us goodbye, turn around, and walk out the door, listening to Sam cry as he walks down the hall of our building, or watching us wave to him from our apartment until he turns the corner. He does this every day. And I can’t imagine it. He does it so that at the end of the day, he can come back home to us and hear about what we did together, without him.

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I wrote this for Scribbit’s Write Away contest. The theme is “Going Home.”