Ford was very kind — he gave the barman another five-pound note and told him to keep the change. The barman looked at it and then looked at Ford. He suddenly shivered: he experienced a momentary sensation that he didn't understand because no one on Earth had ever experienced it before. In moments of great stress, every life form tht exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal. This signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far that being is from the place of his birth. On Earth it is never possible to be farther than sixteen thousand miles from your birthplace, which really isn't very far, so such signals are too minute to be noticed. Ford Prefect was at this moment under great stress, and he was born six hundred light-years away in the near vicinity of Betelgeuse.
The barman reeled for a moment, hit by a shocking, incomprehensible sense of distance. He didn't know what it meant, but he looked at Ford Prefect with a new sense of respect, almost awe.
——- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
My husband travels frequently for business, I think I've mentioned. I often say that the frequency is just about right; he is generally gone three or four days per month. Certainly we would like to see more of him, and so I'm glad they aren't more often; on the other hand, since he travels so regularly, the children and I are quite used to it. "Daddy's-out-of-town" has its own peculiar routine.
On those days, I (instead of Mark) herd everyone into the car and get them to swimming lessons on time; I (instead of Mark) drop the bigger boys off at Wednesday night catechism class and take the younger two to buy groceries before coming back to pick them up; I (instead of Mark) sweep the kitchen and wipe down the counters when the children have gone to bed; I (instead of Mark) make the morning coffee. Because I do those things, I lose some of my planning time, some of my blogging time; but I've been doing it so long that it is just another kind of normal. If there is a trip scheduled for the second week of the month, I have to do double school planning on the first week of the month, or else operate a bit more on the fly.
Other stuff that Mark usually does, I simply don't do. It's Mark who goes in with the children at bedtime and sits with them, together saying their evening prayer; when he leaves, he reminds them to say their prayers in the evening, and we leave it to them. Maybe I'm lazy? Maybe I'm too busy cleaning the kitchen? In any case, bedtime prayers is Mark's "turf," and I don't have any desire to try to substitute for him, at least when he will be back in just a few days.
This kind of normal is not entirely routine, not entirely the same as usual. If Mark is gone for more than three nights, we will probably have a pizza-and-movie evening, and sometimes we accept an invitation to stay for dinner at a friend's house. I make dinners the children all like, because the children's appreciation is all I will get: chili, chicken soup, tacos, spaghetti and meatballs, Caesar salad (yeah, for some reason they all love it, and so do I, so it works out).
I admit to sometimes serving the kids their dinner and then sending them up to watch movies while I eat in front of the computer screen or engrossed in a book. After I have been surrounded by people for enough hours, I am desperate for quiet and solitude. I usually work some such time into the middle of my school day anyway (we call it "break time" and it happens right after lunch), and when Mark is gone I crave it in the evening too. I don't always indulge myself that way, but I do sometimes.
The last time Mark was gone on a weekend, which is much rarer, I hired a babysitter for a few hours between lunch and dinner on Sunday, just so I could disappear and decompress. That money was well spent.
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The quote at the beginning, though — the sense of distance?
When I say the travel is routine, I really mean it. We know by heart the schedules of the planes that trundle back and forth between Minneapolis and the two or three Midwestern cities he travels to most. (He says he barely notices takeoffs and landings anymore, and the one time we went with him, rolling it into a family trip, I was startled to hear multiple hotel workers calling him by name).
But this week he's in Italy!
It's a slightly longer trip than usual, but that's not the only reason it feels sort of strange. There is something surreal about waking up in the morning, knowing that overnight one's husband has been whisked 4700 miles away. I can't quite believe it in my bones; perhaps it is just not part of my evolutionary heritage to really believe that the flesh of my flesh can have been separated, teased apart, and taken so far off in such a short time. Perhaps if he had been plodding off to New York on horseback, and there haggled prices for a berth in a merchant's sailing ship, I'd get used to the idea in the time it would have taken to happen.
We talk a couple of times a day, and the voice-Skype connection is only slightly garbled compared to a cell phone connection to Ohio or Tennessee or Indiana, and I'm still talking on my same old phone. Nevertheless there are hours of difference between my clock and his, and there's something uniquely disconnecting about the calls — I just woke up and you're already done with lunch? It's midafternoon and you can't talk long because you're exhausted and it's dark and you had a lot of good wine at dinner and you want to go to bed?
And then there's a third disconnect, along the lines of "you had the local Raboso and the veal cheeks for dinner, and we had nachos." I cannot deny there's some power that one.
But the aspect that sends me reeling the most really is the simple distance: it's not heartbreaking, nor sad, nor frightening, just simply strange and foreign that this person who is part of me can possibly have gotten so far away, even for a few days. I feel I ought to be there (and not just for the veal cheeks). One of these days it may work out that I can come along, and perhaps that may make a difference.
Perhaps the "few days" is the part that is so strange, that a distance so wide can be folded up so small that it almost — almost — fits into the spaces of our usual routines.
bearing blog 
1a. When my child can't or won't respond to an apology with "I forgive you." Truthfully, my child usually easily say the words "I forgive you" because, I think, they are so well practiced at it. They know that the sky doesn't fall down if they say it before they "feel" it. They know that life goes on, and usually the words have helped.
But if it was one of my children who felt they could not forgive another, I would take that as a sign that the kids need additional intervention before the discussion is over — maybe my child is reasonably afraid that the behavior won't stop, etc., in which case it is probably time for some redirection to different activities. You can forgive someone and still decide you're done playing with them for the day. We would stay there and explore it further. On the other hand, if my child is just being obstinate, well, I don't allow that for the young ones. If you can say "I forgive you," you do.
1b. When my child seeks forgiveness and doesn't hear it.
More commonly, it's my child who has apologized and asked for forgiveness, and another child doesn't say the words. I've been through this one a lot.
2a. The "fake apology" coming from my kid. Well, young children rarely give "fake apologies," right? The "I'm sorry you took what I said the wrong way" kind? They sometimes refuse to apologize, and they sometimes say "I'm sorry" when they don't mean it — and that last is something I wholeheartedly support!
Fake apologies, which have the words "I am sorry" or "I regret" in them but point the sorrow or the regret the wrong direction because they are not grounded in a desire for forgiveness but instead in a desire to continue making a point, are the domain of older kids and adults. People who want to save face.
I have yet to hit the teen years, but I imagine that if I hear one of those coming out of my tween's mouth, I will take him aside and explain that there is nothing wrong or unusual about feeling that you have been misunderstood or wrongly accused, but that the fake apology is never appropriate. If you really desire to be forgiven (and even if the other person is wrong about you, you should desire his forgiveness because forgiveness is good for him and good for your relationship) you will find a way to express that desire sincerely.
Maybe you will have to suck it up and say "I am sorry" and let the person think it is an admission of wrongdoing. Maybe it is not advisable to admit wrongdoing (there are sometimes legal consequences after all) and if no apology you can offer is accepted, at that point you just have to let it go and try (silently) to forgive *him* for refusing to forgive *you.*
2b. Other people's fake apologies. "If someone fake-apologizes to you," I guess I will tell my kids, "the ball is in your court."
You have the choice to accept it as if it were a sincere apology. This is called "taking the high road." It is difficult, but you can have some satisfaction because it is an exercise in humility. It means you let the other person have the last word, and you let it stand for what it is. Sometimes the exact choice of words can be a little tricky, though, because what makes a fake apology fake is that it does not, actually, ask for forgiveness, and so "I forgive you" is a non-sequitur.
(Try it: "I'm sorry you took what I said out of context." "I forgive you." Doesn't work, does it? You see why the fake apology is so insidious? It deprives both people of forgiveness. The only logical response is… "…Um… I'm sorry I took what you said out of context, too?" Or… "I forgive you for being so unclear that I couldn't tell what the context was?" Logically, the argument continues.)
Anyway, "I accept your apology" might work.
There is an alternative response, particularly if you care what the other person thinks of you. You have the choice to treat it as an opportunity for more dialogue, chock full of I-statements ("I get the sense that you feel I have misunderstood you. Do you want to tell me more about that?") Past history and expected future interaction are the guide to which approach makes sense, and you can stop at any point and accept the apology — such as it is — on the theory that it is the best you will get.
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One more thing: I think it is totally appropriate to apply lessons for children to adult problems. That is exactly what we are supposed to do as we grow up: apply what we have learned in the past to whatever is going on right now. It works really well if the lessons were good. And I think that the purpose of apologies does not change with age.