Missing each other

"Mom, I don't want to go back to daddy tomorrow", Zoe cried as she was lying next to me in bed after our usual goodnight story. "I don't like to sleep in my own room, I'm so scared of monsters". I hugged her and said I understood. Five days earlier her dad had yanked the iPad out of her hand while she had been video chatting with me over breakfast, us just talking about her week and that we would see each other that evening, she eating her toast. We were both in a bit of shock, her crying and me asking to at least say goodbye to her. When I picked her up at school later that day, her teacher told me she had been sad and lying on the couch for about an hour in the morning, saying she missed her mom. The teacher had reminded Zoe that she also liked being with her dad, in the true Swedish equality way. Here, the mother and father are exactly the same to a child, no matter the behavior or the parents, no matter the actual feelings of a child. And children need to be constantly reminded that there is something wrong with being closer to one parent, they are supposed to 'like' them equally.

I miss Zoe every minute I'm not with her, (like most moms), but I'm being torn apart when I know she is missing me too. I sometimes wish that we would have a normal life where a break apart is a comfortable diversity, a chance to so something different apart. Instead we stick to one another when we are together because it feels short and limited. We have a lot of fun though, every minute we are together.