Reentry
Early in my career I traveled a lot. I was proud of my ‘road warrior’ lifestyle, wearing my sky miles status as a badge of honor. Every week, the routine was the same: pack the same grey pants and French blue shirt into a bag, march through the airport Monday morning, work madly for 3.5 days, march back through the airport and repeat a week later. I grew really tired of the travel. While I did indeed spend a few nights in Times Square, I spent several months at the call center by the airport in most of mid-America. Lovely for the locals, I’m told. This was part of the fine print of the consulting recruiting brochure I guess.
One of the facets of travel I got used to was the compartmentalization of my work and my real life. I put on my uniform and played consultant for a week, then came back to utility bills and a dog with an emotional disorder. Meanwhile, my bride is going to her own job every day, commuting an hour each way and having therapy sessions with the malte-poo each night. I’d arrive on Thursday evening and begin my process of reentry: what was different? What was the same?
I developed a routine over time: unload my suitcase, check the mail, etc. That was my process of mentally shifting gears back to my ‘real life’ and I didn’t feel ‘home’ until those things were done. My wife had her own mental process for my reentry: get the cockroach out of the vacuum cleaner, answer the question about the letter in the mail from the insurance company, and ask her how she was (not necessarily in that order, I learned). As you might expect, there were many frustrated evenings with missed or misaligned expectations.
I don’t travel near as much as I once did, but the experiences learned in air travel apply to commuter traffic. When I come home every day, I need to be fully present, whether I’m coming from across the country or across town. Given that, the transition is my responsibility, not hers. I don’t know what I’m walking in to each day I come home. I don’t know what has happened in her world or with he kids, so I need to be prepared to be present.
Psychologists call this idea 'attunement.' Like the old radios, 'attunement' is the idea that I am 'dialed-in' to another person. One or two clicks off-center and all I hear is static. Our relationships are like that. When I leave home every morning, she lives her life and I live mine, so the first few moments after reentry should be focused on 'tuning in' to where she is. This is not a rundown of what happened, but of how the days events impacted her. I've learned that this holds true when I leave, when her mother calls, when we open the letter from the teacher or any number of events that impact us. 'Tuning in' to her is the skill.
In time, I’ve learned to be more intentional about reentry. I still check the mail, but after I say hello to my bride, give her my undivided attention for a moment to let her know that I am emotionally back as well as physically back, then turn my attention to the kids.
The lessons are simple, even if the application of them is not.
Use the commute to transition my mind so that I can come in prepared to be present.
Sync first with my bride to attune and reconnect.
Get the cockroach.
Sync with the kids.
Check the mail.