Date: 2005-02-04
To: Life is just filled with Trade-offs
Miles today: 0.0

It was a typical Friday night scene at my house, long about bed-time. The whole gang is in ¢Momma¢s bed¢ eating pop corn, watching a movie on T.V., laughing and talking about the week¢s events. All except me, that is. I¢m off in Tonga, meeting with the Minister of Finance about a technical assistance program to help bring the benefits of ¢connectivity¢ to the peoples of the South Pacific. (The view of the donor community was that they had suffered without SPAM for long enough!) Fortunately, the dress code in Tonga is rather informal ¢ a good thing for me because I am dressed in shorts and an aloha shirt I picked up on the run in the Fiji Airport, having discovered during my transit through Sydney that I personally was not going to benefit from the connectivity of having my suitcase travel with me to Tonga for my meeting with the Minister...Meanwhile, back at Momma¢s bed, ¢She-who-knows-me-best¢ was in charge of refreshments. My three kids still at home were all in attendance: There was Laura, eleven years old at the time, precocious, artistic, kind and gentle, a budding actress with aspirations of Broadway, with her biggest fan (though absent this particular evening) wrapped securely around her little finger; andMathew, eight at the time, the wiz-kid who thinks in five or six dimensions, builds these incredible five-foot high ¢connex¢ models without bothering to read the instructions, and memorizes whole sections of the Encyclopedia Britanica just for fun; andAdam, six at the time, still a bit shy, except when it comes to older women, a chip off the old Fonzarelli if ya know what I mean, the sophisticate of the bunch ¢ he of the ¢croissants and brie and strawberries for breakfast, please¢, set, with a passion for danger and excitement, as reflected in his growing collection of police, fire, and other rescue hero uniforms, gear and equipment. At a lull in the conversation, it must have occurred to my daughter that her biggest fan was, once again, absent. That fact, once it entered upon her consciousness, became the focus of no little anguish and considerable gnashing of teeth. (Or maybe she was just trying to dislodge an errant popcorn kernel, sometimes it¢s hard to tell.) ¢Why¢ asks Laura, plaintively ¢isn¢t Daddy here? Why does he have to travel all the time? Why can¢t he be here with us, having fun, instead of all the way over there on the other side of the world doing whatever it is he does over there?¢¢Mom says he just sits on the beach enjoying those drinks with the little umbrellas in them while she has to stay home and shovel snow off the drive way,¢ says Adam. ¢I just wish he¢d take me with him....¢¢Adam, I¢m SERIOUS¢, says Laura, seriously. "I MISS HIM. I WANT HIM HOME. Momma ¢ don¢t YOU think he should be home here with us??¢¢Well,¢ says She-who-knows-me-best, reflectively, ¢I know how you feel. I miss him, too.¢ (AH HAH! I KNEW IT.) ¢I hate taking the trash out twice a week.¢ (SEE!) ¢But you see, Laura, in Daddy¢s job, he HAS to travel. And I know it¢s hard not having him home, but, if Daddy didn¢t have such a good job, then I might have to go back to work. And then I wouldn¢t be able to be at your school so much any more. Or get you to piano lessons. And we might not be able to live in this house, and go to the Beach every summer, and go out to dinner like we did tonight, and things like that¢¦¢Silence ¢ as certain realities of life settle in... ¢Come on, Laura,¢ says Mathew, impatiently. ¢It¢s not like we never SEE the guy!¢---------I think they'll do Ok while I'm away on the trail. They'll miss me, but they'll do ok. I'm gonna miss them, too. Stay tuned,