Reconnecting With What Matters

For seven years, my husband and I worked opposite shifts in life. He worked nights, leaving the house around six in the evening and coming home at seven in the morning. I work the day shift, making sure our daughter got off to school with a healthy lunch, writing during the days, keeping the house and making sure everyone got dinner.

For seven years, this was our life, and it was manageable, but it was a struggle to get any time alone together. His job didn’t really give time off. He didn’t have a normal schedule that gave him set days off. And when we could manage a long weekend away, his body was still on nights, mine on days, so often we still didn’t spend much quality time together.

This past summer he got a new job with a new company. He works a nine-to-five, Monday-Friday now. Weekends off. It took me a while to get accustomed to the new schedule, since I’m the one who has to work around everyone else’s schedule, but it didn’t take long to get back into the hang of it. I have free time now I didn’t have before, and I am taking full advantage of that. From eight-thirty in the morning when he leaves for work until three when the kiddo gets home, the hours are all mine! Of course, you know what I wanted to do that first week? Sleep. Stay in bed all day and not move an inch!

Then, soon, I began to reconnect with the life I used to have. Routine. Ohhh it’s sweet and I missed it. I have six full hours to myself every single day now. Yes, I still have all the household chores that are expected of me, but I have time to read, to write, to sit and stare at the wall if I want to. Wonderful!

Then the biggest change of all…reconnecting with my husband. This one took a little more effort. It’s pretty simple living as roommates with only an hour or so a day to communicate with each other. We love each other, always have, there’s no doubt about that, but to actually have conversations that were deeper than relating what the kiddo’s weekend plans included? Yeah, that was a little weird.

So we started using his weekends to go do things together. Tourists in our own backyard type things. It’s brought us together with fun exploration and gives us time to talk the way we used to, once upon a time when we fell in love. This past weekend was our 13^th wedding anniversary and we spent his two days off in Whistler, a place he’d never been, enjoying the chilly, wet weather, snowy hillsides and bright red maple trees. What a lovely time we had, and a great time of reconnecting.

Now, it’s time to reconnect with my writing and get back to work. Too much staring at the walls!

Have a great month, everyone. Find something to reconnect with that you’ve lost that matters.

Anna Leigh