Can a Single Parent Ever Do Enough?

A single parent for ten years, I once apologized to my daughter for not being a "normal" mother. She replied that if I had been a "normal" mother, she wouldn't have liked me. I guess I felt good about that.

After escaping a short-lived teenage marriage, I returned home at age 19 with a nine-month old baby, a cat and a color console TV. I stayed at home until Lee Ann was four, keeping house while my parents, barely in their 40s, worked, and my 18, 17, 16 and 8 year old siblings attended school. With all those teenagers heading for young adulthood, our house soon became the party house, and my daughter grew up the mascot amidst a wild '70s life style. When she was four, I got tired of being the live-in maid, went to work, got my own apartment, and eventually enrolled in evening college courses.

I did have a lot of help with my single parenting. The only grandchild for 13 years, "The Little Irish Princess" wanted for nothing. Summers were spent at my parents' swim club or at their Pocono mountain house. My sisters treated her like a baby doll, taking her off my hands even when I didn't ask. My brothers were always available for financial assistance or sitting duties, albeit suspect motives at times -- one brother would parade her up the Avenue as "chick bait," and often rode her around on his motorcycle. But during the school year she was shuttled between my apartment, babysitters and my parents' home while I worked and went to school and I felt guilty not being able to be with her.

When she was 8, she decided she wanted to become a Campfire Girl. I said sure, why not? The night we attended the sign-up meeting at St. Leo's auditorium, we learned there was no leader for my daughter's age group, and did anyone want to volunteer. Those big brown eyes looked up at me and said, "Mommy, will you be the Bluebird leader?" (Sigh.)

Now, working, single mother with all the usual household chores, classes two to three nights a week, homework for both of us the other nights, and, hey, I needed a social life, didn't I? Did I want to hold Campfire Girl meetings in my second floor, two-bedroom apartment once a week? At 26, I was the youngest parent. Most of the girls came from nuclear families of at least four children, with stay-at-home moms in their 30s and 40s, and here was this hip-huggered, halter-topped, big-haired, divorced mom, with a boyfriend who frequently slept over, volunteering to be the Campfire Leader. The nuns were not pleased. But those pleading eyes did me in -- and my hand was the only one that went up.

Little did I realize that, over those next three years, those eight to ten little girls sitting on my hardwood floor with paste, construction paper, Popsicle sticks and blunt-edged scissors would forever carve a place in my heart. Our parish was blue-collar, with large families and little money. The 50-cent weekly fee I requested to cover expenses and the beads they earned was often hard to collect. I filled out financial aid forms, ran candy drives, held cake sales and raffled off baskets of cheer to get enough money to send them to summer camp for two-weeks. Many weekends were spent on short camping trips, nature walks in the park, trips to the Art Museum, and one "Super Sunday" when the only kid to get lost was my own! Looking back, I myself don't know how I did it. But, as my Dad always said, "If you need something done, ask a busy person. "

There were some problems, of course. Labeled "the cool mom," some of my girls thought I would overlook their antics. When they were in fifth grade, two of them cut a Campfire meeting to "go on a date" with a set of twin brothers. I confiscated cigarettes and had to retrieve wooden coasters, hand carved by my Dad, from the street after they lobbed them from the windows during a particularly raucous slumber party. I often suspected they pocketed the dues, and they were not always nice to each other. They were miffed when I was forced to be a responsible role model and chide them or report them to their parents. But each year, the core group returned, a few new ones would join, and I loved them all.

Even though I haven't seen those girls for decades, they are still dear to me, and I was saddened when I watched some of them drop out of school or become pregnant too young. I've also learned that marital status and how your kids turn out are not necessarily correlative.

Parents don't get their rewards until their kids are grown. (Like the summer my college-age daughter worked as a camp counselor, and called me up to apologize for EVER being 14.) I recently received an e-mail from my daughter, who has been reconnecting with her old friends on Facebook, forwarding me a message one of my Campfire girls sent her. Gerri was one of the fifth-grade twin-daters and cigarette-toters, a stay at home mom for awhile, now working in her husband's business (and "still not getting paid," she laughs), who has two sons, a 20-year-old and an 8th grader.

"Mom: This e-mail [below] is from Gerri Smith and I think it will make your day; she is right; how did you do it all? I took you for granted so much and did not appreciate all you did for me on top of what you were doing by working and going to school. I vividly remember that Campfire Girl meeting and looking up at you pleading, please can you be a leader and I don't think you even hesitated, -- well, maybe for a few seconds to question your sanity -- but you did it and look what a long term effect it had on Gerri Smith and me! I love you - Lee Ann

From Gerri Smith from St. Leo's to Lee Ann:

Hi, Lee Ann: How is your Mom? I have so many great memories from Campfire Girls and all the times that I spent at your apartment for "meetings," arts and crafts and the "dance-offs." Thinking back, your mom really did it all. She worked, was going to college and she still had time for us girls, and my favorite were those two weeks at Camp Lenape - She really was great! To this day, every time I hear "Yankee Doodle Dandy," I sing that song she made up at Camp Lenape for the talent show.....

"I'm a St. Leo's Campfire Girl, St. Leo Campfire do or die. A real live sister to my Agape friends, We learn to help, love and strive. We have a goal at each new level, We learn, we love and we make friends. Bluebird, Adventurer, and Discovery, Makes us better people, Campfire teaches us to Liiivvve!"

Best wishes, Gerri."

I can't believe she remembered this. Can we say, please pass the tissues?

Parents don't always realize the good they did, too busy regretting the things that went wrong. I had those times. I feared people would think, because I was a divorced working mother, that my "latchkey" kid would turn out bad or was neglected. My goal in life as a single parent was to see her graduate high school and college, get a career, then get engaged, then get married, THEN have a baby. When, at age 25, her degrees completed and on her way in a career, my beautiful daughter walked down the aisle in a white dress church wedding, without having given birth, this formerly single, hip-huggered, halter-topped, big-haired, "cool mom" of whom the nuns despaired, looked up to the heavens and said "My job is done."