Driving Home

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…..I have a sore eye. It’s dry and uncomfortable. It’s red and has also swollen up underneath. It’s really rather unattractive.

I had to drive home half squinting and almost blind. The whole way home was a rather painful journey.

I had been at a friend’s house for lunch. The kids were having a great time, but it was nearly time to end it. I picked up my bag and checked my mobile phone and discovered that my husband had been sending me messages and calling me non stop for about two and a half hours and I’d missed them all. He’d locked himself out of the house and needed me to come home asap to let him back in. He was totally pissed that I wasn’t answering my phone.

His second to last message was this- “I need you home now. And when you get here I’m gonna cancel your phone”. Woah. Angry much?

His last message informed me that his phone was about to go flat and he supposed that he’d just have to sit there in the rain, waiting and praying for me to check my phone sometime before he reached old age.  Sheesh.  Melodramatic much?

My friends tried to reassure me that I shouldn’t let him make me feel too bad. I mean, it’s not like it was a life or death situation, and I am under no obligation to keep my phone surgically attached me in the off chance that he might call to say I’d need to leave my lovely lunch and drag a toddler kicking and screaming home to unlock the door because Daddy had somehow managed to be stupid enough to leave without taking the right keys!!!!

The drive home, with my twitching eye, and my fear that any moment I could go blind, also involved pictures of our more than likely unpleasant reunion. I saw it all flash before me- tears, yelling, maybe even a door slamming, feet stomping.  I expected a character vilification.  Why am I so irresponsible?  I can never be counted on!  To which, I wish I would be able to respond with something along the lines of “I am not at your beck and call, Mister.  Suck it up!”.  But I knew a more probable reaction from me would be to bawl and feel all mistunderstood and majorly guilty.

However, when I got home, there he was sitting with his head in his hands on the back porch. He’d been locked out for three hours.  I slid open the sliding door and we said hello. I gave him my spare set of keys and told him to hide them somewhere in the backyard so this could never ever happen again. He said thankyou for coming home, followed by “What the hell happened to your eye!?”

And that was it.