Asking your son if he'd miss you reminds me of an incident when I was 21. My mum was in hospital and had had an operation and had been away for six days. Over breakfast, my brother asked me if I was missing her and was horrified when I said no. I said, "It's not that I don't love her, but: a) I've had to do the research for my thesis, help run the house, like wash the family's clothes and the like, and b) mum was 4.25 kilometres away in hospital, but I was 5,000 kilometres away in Japan, and it was only the night before I was due to leave that I thought, "Gee, I've been away for nearly a week!"