Home Thoughts

My husband came home from America this week, after working there for two months. The night before his return, I was suddenly overcome with nervous anticipation. I cleaned the house (a curiously pointless thing to do, given that he is much messier than me); then cleaned myself, rather in the manner of a 1950s housewife ("hairy legs simply won't do if you want to make hubby feel happy"). After I'd finished, it was still only 10pm, so I paced the gleaming kitchen floor for a bit, and then rang a fri end for advice. Her husband travels a great deal, and I felt sure she would have something useful to say on the subject.

"You must have sex as soon as he comes home,'' she said. "That gets rid of all the tension."

"But what about the children?"I asked.

"Do it in the bathroom," she said.

I pointed out that our bathroom door doesn't lock. "Well, put the kids in front of a video for five minutes," she said, with a slight note of exasperation. This did not sound like it was going to work to me. My five-year-old son has not seen his father for two months, and he's going to be fobbed off with Postman Pat? No way, as he would say.

The thing is, although I have grown accustomed to my husband's many absences over the years, I still haven't worked out how to deal with his returns. You get into a little routine of life alone with the children, and then a man comes home and everything changes. It was even more dramatic after this trip, because Tom, the baby, had forgotten who his father was. He was six months old when Neill left: toothless, floppy-bodied, rather placid. Now he's got two front teeth and can sit up and move far enough to wreak havoc if you turn your back on him for a minute.

Anyway, Tom stared at this strange man when he arrived at the airport, and then looked away and hid his head on my shoulder. It was like a scene in a corny movie. The next morning was even worse. I'd sleepily forgotten Tom didn't remember his father, andwhen he woke up in the morning, I got him out of his cot and put him in bed with us. He looked at Neill - a huge person with hair on his chest! - and started crying. I can imagine the scene in 25 years' time: Tom lying on a therapist's couch saying, "...and then I woke up and there was a stranger in my mother's bed!" (Incidentally, a woman wrote to me recently saying that there was a sinister Freudian explanation for my five-year-old's obsession with string, but did not give any further details; perhaps she could let me know what to do about both the string and the homecoming?)

My mother-in-law, who is a musician like my husband, and who also travelled a great deal when her children were small, tells me that I should not make a fuss about him going away. "Men have always left their families at home," she says. Yes, yes, I know,hunter gatherers, soldiers, they've been doing it for centuries. But I bet their wives had mothers and sisters and aunts who lived round the corner, who could help with the kids when the men were away. However, that is not the point I am trying to make.What I am trying to say, in a soppy and befuddled way, is that I am glad my husband has come home for Christmas; and no, we didn't have sex in the bathroom.