How Do You Leave Your Family?

I think I followed a rather odd course to get where I am today.

Some people disapprove of my decision to come here; I question almost every day the justification for coming to the city. They say that I'm not an absent father and not such a great husband because...well, I am physically absent from my family.

Perhaps this requires some clarification.

This job was like a dream come true. I am working with a company whose mission is to make the Internet a better place. One of the founders is a well known speaker and author on the business of software. They have incredibly talented and intelligent people working here, which just makes me question their decision to hire me a little more.

I was hired primarily to handle in-office tasks, a low-level system administrator, while trying to expand my system administration skills by observing and being mentored by my coworkers. What this meant, however, was that I was required to be in New York City. Physically.

I have a mortgage. A son in school. My wife has a job that she hadn't vested her retirement account yet.

Basically taking the job meant I would be in New York and my family would be back in the rural home town. This wasn't a decision that I took lightly. My job at the time was taking a toll; I worked in education, and as a career it wasn't looking too sunny on the horizon for a myriad of reasons. Morale was flagging across the board, budgets were being slashed, and what was once a job with security may very well not have much security in a few years. We also had bills to pay with more on the way, given that we have a daughter in college and the economy has tanked so her job prospects are probably not the brightest. My salary, far under what the commercial sector gives system administrators, was just enough to keep afloat. But at least I had a decent healthcare plan and, at the time, hopes of a decent retirement fund.

I was willing to keep that job. I was resenting it, but I still came home to my smiling young son and my weary wife every night and we occasionally managed to go out to dinner on the weekend. It wasn't easy sometimes, especially when bills were tight or we had another stressful incident at work. But it was a job, and I had a paycheck, and I had my family.

The offer to go to the other company was alluring, and the timing...well, this was something I'd be asked once, and if I didn't take it, it was gone. I knew I'd not be offered this again. And the then-current job was having an administrative transition that also closed a door; a person that helped others with retirement and knew how to navigate the paperwork jungle offered to be my guide, but would be no longer doing it once the management transition was done. It would be the final year that person would do that kind of work.

I was at a crossroads and didn't know which decision was "right."

I happen to have a very selfless wife. And brave. She said, "This job is killing you. You have to take it."

She would have to basically take care of the home in addition to taking my son to school each day. Come Winter, this is not a small chore. I was worried. I still am worried, as we are just starting to get into the Winter season. And my son is young and at times a handful; we've often wondered how we got  relatively lucky with him in that he's generally a good boy and not ill-behaved. But like any young child, he can do things to get on your nerves. And now she'd be basically raising him alone.

Well, not entirely true; my parents are still in the area, and they adore my little guy, often asking if he'd like to spend the night and always willing to help out with babysitting or running errands. Dad was willing to help out diagnosing unusual issues around the house when necessary.

She insisted I take the job. "We'll make it work."

So I did. With much trepidation. I can't count the number of times I ran numbers to figure out whether I'd have enough money to live on in the city while paying the mortgage; best case, I had a surplus, and worst case, I would have just enough to scrape by.

Other obstacles included finding a place to live (ever try apartment hunting when you're over a hundred miles away from the place you're trying to move to? It sucks. Really. Especially when you don't have a lot of extra money to outsource the hunt for you) and actually having the money to move; ironically it was, for us, tremendously expensive to make the move in the first place.

But as my wife said: we made it work.

I talk to her every day. Wonders of modern technology. I ask how my son's doing, and we set up his computer so I could Skype in to chat whenever he's in his room (which, thanks to an addiction to Minecraft and YouTube videos, he often is.) I ask how he's doing in school, which he usually gives the dismissive hand-waving answer he gave when I was there in person. But I hear his voice and see him occasionally smile.

And of course I Skype to my wife every night, and we have chats periodically. Things we normally take for granted I now try to ask, usually getting the same answers you'd expect to get in a routine day. Little events of the day become anchors for the interesting.

We also plan visits; it's expensive to visit the city. A round trip bus ticket for an adult pushes close to the $100 mark; add in the children's ticket and it's north of the mark. If she drives into the city and parks the car, taking it nowhere for the time she's here, that's about $40 per night plus the cost of a Metro card for her and the little guy to get around plus whatever food expenditures and a weekend visit can easily hit $200.

The long term is hazy. We have plans to be reunited in a more permanent fashion in coming years, but we will need to see how the economy changes as well as employment prospects.

Until then, we make do with Skype conversations and in-person visits once or twice a month. The visits are hard; we try to make the most of our time together (well, my wife and I do. My son likes to take advantage of a faster Internet connection to play Minecraft) and when the departure time rolls around I'm not embarrassed to say there's a tear or two shed in the process. There are times my wife and son departed from the Port Authority and I opt to walk an hour to the apartment rather than navigate the subways just because it gives me a bit of recovery time in which to collect myself.

So how do you leave your family? I'm not sure I entirely did. In some ways I put more effort into communicating with my wife now than I did when we were in physical proximity. I think of them every day.

My wife did give me something to remind me of her. She bought a pendant of a heart that splits in two, one marked with a symbol for "male" and the other marked with the symbol for "female." She has one; I have the other. And I've worn it every day. That pendant hasn't left my neck for one moment since I came to the city.

For better or worse, we're making it work.