Last week at my haircut appointment, my hairdresser C. and I were talking about families. He slipped in a bit of gentle criticism about his partner's mother, who (in his opinion) has some unhealthy baggage she carries around with her. But he hastened to add, because he is a very kind, big-hearted person, that many of her troubles stemmed from having raised six children single-handedly.
I think that would probably send lots of people close to, if not over, the edge. Six kids as a single parent! My father's mother was practically a single mother for much of my dad's childhood, and she had six children to juggle and infinitely more hardships to live through than she would have had today. Then I watched some Olympics coverage with L. and we listened to a story about Michael Phelps, who struggled with ADHD as a child, and was also raised by a single mom. And at the pool on Saturday, I chatted for a long time with a new neighbor who is a single mom by choice, and is raising her four-year-old adopted daughter. She is devoted to her daughter and hasn't spent a single night away from her, but she candidly told me that weekends are so hard and, as she told me this, her face crumpled a bit in a mixture of guilt and relief at having confessed that fact--the fact that she loves her daughter inside and out, but also sometimes just needs some time alone.
I was a single mom for four days this week while Scott was all the way in Canada for a conference, and while my kids were great, I did have some frazzling, impatient, I'm-at-the-end-of-my-rope, self-pitying moments. There's nothing like having your spouse leave for a few days to make you realize just what a team you are, and just how much you rely on one another to keep both your sanity and your family in smooth working order. Plus, I really, really wanted to go to Canada, back to the area we loved so much while we were in graduate school--back to the cooler, no-humidity days and the landscape of that part of the world, and back to that part of myself I left behind in upstate New York when we moved.
Instead, I stayed behind and took L. to school and T. to the children's play museum, several grocery stores, my favorite thrift store, the library, the playground, and even crock pot shopping (she was very helpful there--"No, Mama, get dah RED crock pot wif dah flower, not dah WHITE one!"). I rolled up my sleeves and threw myself into solo parenting with gusto. I was Fun Parent and Super Parent until about Friday, when it occurred to me that if I had to be Maya the Dinosaur for one more minute I'd have to stick a fork in my eye. For dinner that night I ordered Papa John's pizza and we ate it on the couch while watching WordGirl.
What gets me the most about solo parenting is not so much tackling the daily routines single-handedly (although I am spoiled and it did get tedious to both cook and wash up afterwards) but the heavy weight of responsibility I felt on my shoulders every day, everywhere I went. I worried about what would happen if something happened to me and no one was around to know. When my mom called on Friday, all the way from Greece, I felt like a child again, happy to have an adult around for a few minutes, even if she was all the way across the Atlantic. I locked up the house at night and lay in bed, worried, doing a mental inventory of the nighttime routines: Did I lock THAT door? Or turn out the kitchen light? Without the sound of my husband downstairs doing the end-of-night chores, the night felt quiet and heavy, and my kids seemed extra far away from me somehow, lying in their rooms. And then I got it: it's not the daily routines and nitty-gritty aspects of raising kids that must take its toll on single parents, but the pressing weight of responsibility; that feeling that you have to be two parents instead of one, and that you have to stand a little taller, be a little stronger, and sacrifice more of yourself in the process.
The four days alone left me feeling so lucky through and through, and so in awe of single parents everywhere. Yesterday morning, when I took my luxurious extra-long shower (L. interrupted me at one point for something and it was so gratifying to be able to tell him: "Go ask Papa--he'll help you"), I thought about all the single parents in the world, past and present--single by choice or circumstances. I thought about the burdens and challenges they shoulder, the extra drive they must have to see their kids through the rocky parts of life, safe to the other end.