Let me be clear before anyone comes for me — I love my children more than anything in this world. That's not up for debate.
And also: the two days after they leave for their grandparents' house are quietly, secretly, some of my favorite days. The house goes silent. The dishes I wash stay washed for more than an hour. I can start a thought and actually finish it, no small voice cutting in halfway to ask where its other shoe went. I get to remember what my own mind sounds like when nobody needs anything from it.
It's not that I don't want them. It's that I forgot I was also a person, and those two days hand her back to me for a little while.
Then day three arrives and it flips completely. The quiet gets too quiet. The clean house feels wrong, sterile, missing something. I start listening for the noise that isn't there. And I miss the chaos so badly it aches. I want them back, shoes lost and all.
Both things are true. The peace and the missing. I've stopped feeling guilty about the first one.