The good and the bad

A's in his second week of training. We made it through week one no problem. I managed things at home just fine, as I knew I would and he managed to score well on his indoc test. Next two weeks are CRM and systems. He came home for a short time this weekend past (11pm friday-2pm sunday), but won't be coming home again until systems is done. Then, another short weekend and back for sim time. I figure if we can get by with him being gone for 1-2 weeks at a time, then going the 4-5 days required when he's flying regularly won't be an issue.

Reintegrating him into our lives was not so difficult, but was reminiscent of summers past when I worked away from home and had limited time back on occasional weekends. He came home from training with a few tasks he wanted/needed to accomplish. But he also wanted to spend time with us. And there was limited time for it to all come together. It can be hard to reconcile all that needs to be done with what is wanted to be done. I learned this the hard way many summers ago and was careful not to push it. Careful planning, scheduling and remembering that he had an agenda of his own and wasn't solely available to pay attention to us for the weekend helped. I think it's a valuable lesson to learn.

We had the most difficult personal crisis of our relationship come up this weekend. I won't go in depth about it here, but it involved making painful, life changing decisions. It is incredibly hard to have to push though this alone, knowing that A wants to be here more than anything, but can't be and also doing my best to keep the goings on a secret from my son. Thank god I have several friends who have stepped up an offered support and compassion. Knowing that makes A feel slightly better as well too, I think. I can only thank my stars that A WAS here this weekend to help me through the first stage. The physical will be resolved in another 3.5 weeks, but the emotional will take longer. It would be easier to handle if he were able to come home again in a few days, once his trip was complete, but that's not the stage we are at yet. And even in this difficult cloud, we were able to see the silver lining.