It's that time of year again. The peonies in my garden are about to burst into the most beautiful deep red flowers. I wait for them every year, they take ages to open and it marks the beginning of the busiest season for our family. As a seasoned film wife I can feel the peak season ramping up, as the calender gets filled and husband/Daddy sightings get fewer and fewer. Film is a balancing act, one that works well sometimes with evenly spread out jobs, time enough in between for solid family hangouts, and jobs booked ahead. In the winter film life can be as bare and cold as the northern tundra without a day's work in sight. And there's time like the now, the summer heating up, when the work just goes on and on and on and on.
And so it always takes a minute to get into it.
The film summers used to rock my world, as a new mom who needed all the support and hands on deck she could find. The idea of not knowing when your husband will be home to take the screaming infant from your tired breast is enough to send most new moms into fits of tears, complete with crumpled tissues and the biggest "Why Me?" complex you can grow.
And then life goes on and the winter comes and the work gets less and you wonder why you ever made such a fuss and wish your husband would get back to work already so you can go on with your idyllic little life at home, folding towels and planting flowers, and sewing in the evenings, waiting for him to come home.
And then you grow even more, and gain the status of the experienced film wife. You stop asking when he will be coming home, stop praying he will swoop in right at the end of dinner to help with the whining bath and crying bedtime and the mountain of dishes you've ignored all day. You stop feeling sorry for yourself and you begin to take pride in all that you can accomplish without the help of a spouse. And they take pride in you. You begin to understand just how powerful and competent you really are, that you and the children can survive three weeks four weeks two months of mowing lawns and oil changes and extremely large grocery shops and cleaning all of it - all of the house, all of the yard, all of the clothes, all of the time. You become a team, you and the kids, making the house work and your lives work while such an essential part of your family is away.... and your husband cheers you on from his own post, on set making a living so we can do exactly that... live. Happily, confidently, and with a sense that as a family, together or apart, you can get it done. It's all for the greater good. It's for our future. One day soon we will spend our days working together rather than apart, for ourselves and for our family.
So here I am, at the beginning of the summer. The calendar is filling and the days are longer and the back door stays open later, waiting for his return. I am getting into it. There hasn't been time to sew, time to knit, time to sit. The laundry and the dishes are multiplying and my freshly planted garden needs most of my evening time. But the momentum is waking me up to the speed of the summer months, and so here we go. We are blooming again.
