Parenthood seems like a daily embodiment of Stockholm Syndrome, in which you passionately love your tormentor even though they wish you never to sleep, eat, use the bathroom or have sex in peace as long as they can help it. And you, sad tool, grow to like it or at least stop questioning it as something intrinsically wrong so that when you find youself facing an extended stretch of babyfree time you still wake up at 6:20 am because a timezone and several countries away your son is doing the same thing.

Since he was born I have not spent more than half-a-day away from Matei (in the early days
not so much a cause of celebration as BITTER ANGST and REGRET) and being apart now feels like having my heart scraped with sandpaper and then kicked for good measure. I am bereft and everything stabs at me - the sight of toddlers in supermarkets, the sound of a child crying, the scattered toys.

It feels strange to speak of loss in a context in which one's child is neither lost nor dead, but merely on vacation, but I am heartbroken all the same. Z is very understanding of my sadness and coping mechanisms of choice (extended love affair with the internet, interrupted by occasioannal thoughts about cleaning) and he assures me that I will soon adapt to this punishing schedule of sleeping-in and evenings out and being responsible only for my own hygiene needs. That I will have the things that I most longed for - alcohol, freedom and the ability to restore television to its rightful place in my life.

Everyone else tells me how the baby's longing for me has quickly been replaced by the baby's crush on the workmen in the Belgrade flat (they let him climb the ladder and showed him everything in their toolbox). In short, my anxious ghost is being reassured on all fronts that there is nothing to worry about.

I'm glad to know he's fine. I'm delighted he's being so well looked after and having a better time than I could offer him and yes, I am ecstatic to be spending some alone-time with my husband and not worrying that our personal crescendo of joy will be interrupted by a crescendo from the other room.

For most of the working week I only spend about three-four hours a day with Matei and I thought 'it's not like I see him that much and that he will miss me putting him to bed and playing in the morning, and look how much better it will be for me to get all my work done and for him to spend three months running around in fresh air on the seaside' except that I never thought how much I would miss those three hours per day.

He is my son. No matter how far he is I am still connected to him. My thoughts surround him. He is my heart incarnate and his absence is like the aching of a phantom limb.