the vacation is over

I'm home again, away from the hot sun, biting bugs, and delightful peace of the mountains, back in the fog. I took a last bike ride with Iris this morning before we left. We rode down to the pond (this is called "Birch Lake" officially, but it is no lake. It is a modest-sized pond) and listened to the bullfrogs, and then it was time to pack up and go. Five year-old Lucy was the very last one to leave the dining hall at breakfast, and I apologized to the very polite teenaged staff for being so tardy. At home the pets are all fine, Lucy is watching "Spongebob," and I've already put in some quality time playing Warcraft.

For the last couple of years our annual week at Camp Mather was a chance for the Sober Husband and I to reconnect. We were a team, managing our headstrong offspring, navigating the hordes of middle class San Franciscans, and enduring bear-related mishaps. This year, though, things were off. Everyone expected me to be miserable without any internet in general and the World of Warcraft in particular, but I was fine. Indeed, this was the first time I really personally enjoyed Camp Mather: I found the woods beautiful, I loved going an entire week without getting into a car, and I felt like a little kid tearing around on my beautiful new bicycle. Lucy and Iris were happy, of course, in little kid heaven. Who wasn't into it? The Sober Husband.

For days, he was distracted, uncommunicative, and apathetic. Our friends noticed his lack of participation or interest. He wouldn't have a glass of wine while waiting in the dining hall line or over dinner (it's traditional for families to bring wine to dinner). Usually we play lots of badminton, but this year, it was like pulling teeth to get him to consent to one game (I'm not much for sports-like games, but I do love me some badminton. Playing badminton is one of the few times my mind switches off, and when a good volley is on, all I am aware of is the shuttlecock). He read the history of solid waste I'd given him instead of watching Lucy and Iris at the pool. When I was tired of his obvious desire not to be there, I encouraged him to go off to check his email, drive until he got a signal on his iPhone (note to San Franciscans: the closest iPhone coverage to Camp Mather is waaay off in Groveland, and there it exists only on the back porch of Al's Cafe). He complained that I asked him to upload an entry to my blog. The only time he seemed happy was during the Cowboy Breakfast Ride I made him take Thursday morning with Iris Uber Alles (Iris moaned at length about having to set an alarm and rise early, but evidently the trip was magical. They rode down a canyon, stopped for a hearty outdoor breakfast cooked by actual cowboys, and then rode back through meadows filled with wildflowers, arriving at camp three hours after leaving).

On Thursday evening Iris was very hungry, so I walked with her to the dining hall early. Lucy was still playing with a little friend from a nearby cabin, and we expected the Sober Husband to join us when Lucy was ready for dinner. Indeed he stopped by our table to tell us that he and Lucy were in line, but that Lucy had been invited to eat with her friend's family. Iris and I had eaten all of our oddly magnificent zucchini saute and asked him to get us more. Later he stopped by and scraped the zucchini off his plate for us, but then vanished. We were puzzled, as we'd expected him to join us after carrying Lucy's tray for her, and after we finished eating, we went looking for him. I found him talking animatedly to Lucy's friend's mother, gazing deeply into her eyes and bending forwards close to her. The two of them were oblivious to anyone else, particularly Iris and I, and they made it clear they didn't want Iris and me to join them. I gave the husband a glare of death and informed him that we were going back to our cabin.

Later we saw the husband of that family stride past to his cabin. After that, we saw Lucy and her little friend run by, giggling. It was another half hour after that before the Sober Husband showed up, smiling. I am not normally one to be insecure or jealous, but I was outright livid. While he was being so distant and joyless all week, I could excuse it on the grounds that he was distracted, thinking of work, etc... But to see him so happy and animated, flirting with another woman was a slap in the face for me. It made his lack of enjoyment personal. What was the husband's excuse for this? He said that he has "problems" with me that he feels "unable to articulate." This discussion deteriorated.

After a night's sleep, I told him first thing in the morning to clear out and leave us alone for the day. I wanted to spend the last day of the trip with people who considered me witty and intelligent, not someone who disagreed with everything I said when he deigned to pay any attention to me. When he came back at dinner time, I told him that I would like to discuss financial arrangements for a trial separation.

Ever since he started his job at Doggyo, he's been abstracted and distant. Unlike the children, I've been genuinely happy for him that he has such a fulfilling job, but it's taken a toll on our family life. The children miss spending lots of time with him. He and I have grown apart; once Lucy remarked, "Daddy doesn't kiss Mommy any more. He is only for Doggyo." We used to periodically call or email each other throughout the workday; now I feel that any contact from me is an imposition, and so I try to limit that contact. He's no longer interested in doing things with me; I asked him in particular to go to a play I'm dying to see, and he put it off and put it off (in the past, we often went to the theatre together and even donated to various smaller theatre groups). On the rare occasions we go somewhere together, he doesn't want to hold my hand, whereas he used to be very affectionate.

On top of that distance, the Sober Husband has taken to doing things which he knows I don't want him to do, in a sort of "screw you" manner. For example, last year he promised me that he "couldn't possibly ask" me to commit to going to Martha's Frigging Vineyard at his mother's command for a family reunion; this year, he used emotional blackmail and all sorts of pressure. I asked him not to go to Chicago for his friend's funeral, as he'd been out of town several times, including to keep vigil at the friend's deathbed, and he had already attended a wake, AND the trip meant his being away on Mother's Day, surely the one day of the year a Drunken Housewife should be allowed to sleep in and not have to drag around making breakfast for whiny, father-missing children. He ignored me and booked the trip. Maybe the most maddening was the weekend he spent Sunday playing golf with coworkers after I asked him to do something with the children and requested that he PLEASE not play golf that day (he'd had many, many work obligations that week, including after hours mandatory team-building exercises which had led to his having virtually no time with the children that week and me having no break, either). The only bright side of that was that one of the golfing party uploaded a video to the web of the Sober Husband repeatedly windmilling and whiffing (oh, how the children howled with merry laughter).

The Sober Husband was completely gobsmacked by my request for a separation. "I would have said I was happily married." That line brought forth a bitter response, indeed. It doesn't feel like a marriage of equals; it feels more as though he treats me like a rather idiotic au pair. This really is like a horrendous illustration of the feminist party line that a woman makes a horrible, horrible mistake for which she must atone drastically when she decides to stay home with her children (somehow I never hear stories of how stay-at-home fathers ruin their lives).

So what next? I haven't felt able to carry through with my demand because it's stupid fucking Father's Day. What kind of a woman throws her husband out of the house on Father's Day? Sigh. And do I need to rush out and get some form of job now, right when the children are out of school and needing to be watched all day? Dammit.