Monday, April 27, 2009

The Golf Widow

The golf season has officially begun and I find myself in a new role - that of a golf widow. This will be our first summer as members of a country club and I'm not sure this is what I signed up for. I was the one with the connections to introduce us to the club and I went through the proposal process fully aware that the goal was a golf membership. Maybe I was counting on there being truth to the rumored 5-10 year wait list for golf. Maybe I was distracted by my husband's excitement at golfing again. But, regardless of how I got here, I am about to embark on a summer of single parenting the weekends while my husband is golfing.

The argument by my husband is, "what's the big deal, you take care of the kids by yourself all the time". Thank you for noticing and EXACTLY. That is exactly the big deal. I don't count on the weekends for blissful alone time, but I do count on sharing the load. I look forward to the weekend where the parenting duties get split up. I like the support when a death match breaks out over a toy; and now this spring, I appreciate the team approach to t-ball and soccer practices.

My husband's rebuttal is, "I work all week, when am I supposed to have any hobbies?" I don't have a good answer. I work all week too. And, if we want to get technical about the work week, I put in a lot of overtime. There are many nights that my husband gets "stuck on a call" or "stuck in a meeting" and misses the train.

My sister-in-law, a seasoned golf widow, has told me to "stand your ground". But how much ground do I really have? There's two of us and theoretically we should be splitting this parenting gig 50/50. We've established that we both work all week, so who should have the weekends off? I do have time during the week to run or play tennis when the kids are in school, so I don't always need my husband's support on the weekend to have hobbies. But, I'm also not happy with the expectation that I am always there to take care of the kids.

Since I do have hobbies of my own during the week, I will be as flexible as I can to support my husband's interests on the weekend. Maybe we can compromise for one round of golf a weekend. This discussion is tabled for now, but definitely not closed. He assured me just this past weekend that he is only golfing a lot now to build his handicap for the summer tournaments. Yes, you read that right, tournaments is plural. Definitely not closed.

2 comments:

  1. I'm not sure Husband likes this post!

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  2. My husband doesn't golf. (Thank goodness!) But yesterday he metioned that he's signed up for an Iron Man. Great. That's just great. Can you imagine what would happen if I announced he'd need to be available for an extra 20 to 30 hours of childcare a week, for a year, according to MY schedule?

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