Time together is worth more than anything. Guard it, protect it, and buy it when possible.
Because people did not understand Aaron’s schedule, surviving residency meant we had to become very protective of the time he was home. When he walked in the door, I always hung up the phone. If he was going to be home, I made every effort to have us there – without friends around. When he had vacation time, we would carefully consider if and with whom we would be willing to share that time. Most of the time, we were not willing to share his vacations – even with extended family. That was really hard for family to understand, but when we were with extended family, our kids were off playing with cousins and aunts and uncles and were still not spending time with their dad. When we would come back home from the vacation, they still felt like they had not seen him.
Those precious weeks off were a lifeline for us. They were the time to reconnect and recharge so we could make it through the next several months. My number one priority was to get my family through residency intact. It wasn’t to make it to every family reunion, go out to eat with different friends each month, or even make sure we had lots of social gatherings at our home – although all of those things matter to us. They would have all been obsolete if our marriage and family relationships were not solid. Because of that, we had to set careful boundaries and again, be okay with the fact that most people would not understand.
We also used our resources to “buy time” – as much as possible. There aren’t many professions that require the number of hours away from home for such little compensation. (I paid my babysitter more than my husband made as a general surgery resident.) We made a decision early on that we were going to do whatever it took to “buy time.” This changed over the years, but some of the ways we incorporated this included me paying someone to take care of the yard so that my husband could be with the family when he was home, purposely moving into a newer home so that it would require less maintenance from him, and investing in good babysitters {more on that in Lesson 4}.
