What I didn’t have: the money I’d deposited, the four nights I’d been imagining for months, the anniversary trip we had planned in January. What I did have: two weeks of approved leave, a list of things I wanted to do, and the knowledge that I had said what I meant to say clearly enough that it couldn’t be misinterpreted.
The operations coordinator in me finds that accounting necessary. Every decision has a cost column. The cost of going on the trip I hadn’t agreed to would have been different and harder to quantify. I’d have spent four days absorbing and managing and returning home with the same unaddressed facts and additionally the certain knowledge that I’d been too tired to hold my own line.
A hundred and forty dollars and the trip I’d planned seemed, on balance, the better trade.
## What Nathan Managed on His Own
Something I did not anticipate: Nathan handled more than I expected.
I had been, without fully articulating it even to myself, waiting for the trip to demonstrate in concrete terms the degree to which our dynamic was imbalanced. What I had imagined was this: Nathan would go, realize he was exhausted by the full weight of managing Elaine without my help buffering things, and come home with a first-hand understanding of what I’d been carrying.
I had not quite imagined that the experience might be instructive in a more specific way — that he would manage Elaine well, and that the management would teach him things.