She was just 4 years old. Old enough to understand that Dad was leaving again, old enough to dread the calm and the dull atmosphere that returned every time dad stepped out of the house but not old enough to understand why he had to go. So this wasn’t an unfamiliar sight for us or our neighbors. A little girl crying, a middle aged man hugging her tight, whispering soothing words and finally putting her down. The girl refusing to let go and dragging a couple of steps along the way holding on to his legs.

This image more or less shaped up my entire course of life. The girl in the picture wasn’t me, though I wished so many times that it had been me, because if it would have been me, I wouldn’t have to witness it, nor would the memory have stayed with me. But that wasn’t meant to be.

My father, simple hardworking sales executive tried his best to provide us with a comfortable life, even if it meant taking up a job that involved travelling and being away from home 20 days in a month. Needless to say, it took its toll on our family.

My mother resigned to her husband’s long absences but not without regrets. She withdrew herself from most of the things outside of home. She went about the mundane chores in the house and tried to keep us company but her heart was somewhere else.

I was 10 years old and at an age where life was suddenly becoming interesting. I wanted to indulge in hobbies, learn new things and share what I learnt at school. Of course I missed my Dad, but at that age I needed my mom more.

It was my sister who suffered the most. She waited for the month to end as soon as it began. She counted days as far as she could. And she cried and sulked days after Daddy left. Very early in life, I figured out that a family was indeed a joint venture. All members were needed for it to function smoothly. One less was not just a small absence, it disturbed the whole balance and rendered others useless.

We longed for our dad to return home from his trips and when he did, we didn’t or I would say we just couldn’t make the best use of it. My father worked so very hard, sacrificed his time with his wife and children and spent every penny he earned for his family, this should have made us feel eternally grateful. But his absence made us blind to all the things we should have been grateful for. We wished he took up some other job which didn’t need him to be away so much.

As years went by, the ideal of a family life started to shape up in my mind. Very soon, I had reached a conclusion. Being together was not only the most important thing for a family, but it was the absolute essential. For a family to bond, it was necessary to stay together most times. In my opinion, because we didn’t stay together most days in a month for more than a decade, we wasted the time we had together in arguments. The love was there but the understanding had ceased to be. The expectations from the time actually being spent together was so sky high that it always fell short.

By the time I fell in love and got married, my heart and mind had made up a lifelong choice. I would never be away from my partner. And the day we had our daughter, the resolve only became stronger. In the 10 years that we have been married, his job has taken him to 3 different countries. What did I do? I followed him everywhere he went.

Before I got married, I studied worked to be a lawyer. Every time he had to go to another city or country, I packed my bags and made a new start. I worked for 5 years only opting to stay at home after our child was born.

My parents and close friends question my decision often. Some even think it is degrading for a woman to just follow a man on his career path, not thinking about her own. But I do not look at it in that way. The decision is much more than just about a job. It is to keep my family together. For me, being together is everything. It is more important than his job, my career or anything else. Maybe it is a very idealistic approach to our life together, but for me, nothing else would work.

He has no problems with a long distance relationship for a while if it means my career won’t be sacrificed. But it is me who has a problem. I have lived in a house with the continual absence of one parent and I do not wish to pass that on to my child. I have seen two individuals suffering from being away from each other but not doing anything about it. I don’t want them to be me or my husband.

So what I want is actually a very intangible thing. I want to keep intact the ideal of a family that I have set in my mind. I don’t want to ever give up on the everyday life that we share together as a family. Of course we have stayed apart sometimes. A week here; a month there when something inevitable comes up. But other than that, I have strived to keep the family together, always. If it meant adjusting to a new place every 3 years, I have taken up the challenge with a smile.

It hasn’t always been easy. But anything worth having is not going to be easy. To hold on to something, one most know the importance of it. I love the feeling of my family being together and that has been the single most important thing to me. And to that, I can proudly say, I have never given up on what I love doing.