<a href="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/meands.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-509" title="meands" src="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/meands-538x550.jpg" alt="" width="473" height="483" /></a>
<h5 style="padding-left: 360px;">Photo by Jason Berg</h5>
Jason and I just spent a weekend at home without our three girls. This is, in fact, how we spend every other weekend, and it's always bittersweet—sweet because we get to eat and sleep and go out when we please, but bitter because there are always moments in every weekend that feel empty and tinged with sadness because our kids aren't there to share them.

<strong>I'm gradually getting more used to this give and take, the all or nothing rhythm of post-divorce parenting. It's not easy, in so many ways, but there are some aspects of two-household parenting that I'm beginning to recognize as a gift</strong>—one I wouldn't get in quite this same way if my kids lived with me every day. (Yes, I'm definitely doing the silver lining thing here.)
<h4>Keeping in touch</h4>
The first gift comes to me in the form of emails, voicemails and phone calls from the girls. Last Thursday afternoon, for instance, this email arrived in my inbox:

<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Dear mama,
I figured out my Halloween costume!!! I can be a detective!
I've attached a picture of me, I love you soooo much.
Love,
Q</em></p>
It's true, I wasn't the one who was there brainstorming costume ideas with Q, but receiving her email really made my day and created a bond between us in a different sort of way.

S, who is nine, prefers the phone to email. If I'm not able to pick up and talk, she leaves me long, detailed voicemail messages that end up being a fully-formed, one-way conversation, packed with news and personality. She always closes her calls and voicemails with a loud, smoochy kiss sound, followed by a sound that, in her mind, represents big, strenuous bear hugging (and also sounds a bit like someone trying to bench press more than they should).
<h4>Rich reunions</h4>
<strong>The other thing that I've been noticing about this parenting situation we're in, is how distinctly different our sense of "reunion" is with our girls.</strong> After days with just the two of us, suddenly Jason and I are pulling more chairs up to the table, setting more places, cooking more food, and reveling in the buzz that comes with more personalities, bodies and voices in the house. Just think of the "How was your day?" question many families ask daily after school or over dinner. Now multiply the responses by four or five (the number of days the girls have been away), and add in a bit of a party atmosphere, complete with the intensity of love that accompanies reunions.

Last night at dinner, we asked the girls about their weekends, and asked if there was anything exciting or stressful about the week ahead. We touched on some issues that had clearly been waiting to come out, and they did. Some tears needed to come out, too, and we were glad there was a place for that to happen.
<h4>More than a silver lining</h4>
Maybe it's bad when something that's on our kids' minds gets put on hold until they see us again, but maybe it's good. Maybe it builds just enough that they actually reach the point of communicating it, rather than brushing it, crumb by crumb, under the rug.

Divorce is pretty much always viewed as something bad, especially for kids.<strong> But what I'm realizing is that there's lots of good and bad wrapped up in sharing custody of your kids. </strong>People see what they want. We also have the power to make the realities we want—to turn less-than-perfect situations into something good.

I never imagined that my life as a mother would look like this, and I would never say I would choose this setup for my kids. But there is something to the whole "absence makes the heart grow fonder." <strong>There's something powerful in missing each other</strong>, and wanting to share something enough to call or send an email. <strong>There's something poignant about reunions</strong>, and that time spent together after a time apart.

And somehow that seems like more than a just a silver lining, or a glass-half-full way of seeing things. It's very much a beautiful reality in my life.