My Time as a Single Parent

I found myself cast in the single parent role not once but twice. My first marriage ended in an amicable divorce when my daughter was two. By the time my son was born, my seven-year relationship with his father had also come to an end. Obviously, I was not doing something right.

I actually got pretty good at the single mom thing. It took a few years and someday I'll find out just how badly I messed up my kids when they send me the psychiatry bills but at this point they seem like decent people.

The most challenging part for me was finding out at my ultrasound that baby number two was going to be a boy. I grew up in a household primarily populated with females as had my mother. The baby's father was out of the picture. I had absolutely no reference point for raising a boy. The thought of it brought waves of panic. I went through the next four months with a supply of paper bags in my purse in case I found myself hyperventilating again.

Seriously, I'd had no training for this. No brothers to roughhouse with or teach me to play sports. I loved watching football and understood the game pretty well but I'd never thrown a pass in my life. And forget baseball. I couldn't hit a ball with a bat if the ball were the size of the Goodyear Blimp. I'd lived on my own for the better part of seven years and could take care of minor things but I couldn't climb up on the roof to clean the gutters (fear of heights), or crawl into the crawl space (fear of mice), or fix the car ( fear of something under the hood I'm sure).

I was apparently not cut out to have a boy. I couldn't imagine what God was thinking. What could this unborn baby have done already to deserve a mother who was most assuredly going to mess him up? He'd probably end up wearing aprons and playing with dolls no matter what I did. I was convinced I'd raise a momma's boy and I was inconsolable.

We haven't even discussed the whole new avenue of psychosis opened up when I started thinking about toilet training and circumcision choices. I toilet trained my daughter, partially through demonstration. Now how was I going to do that with a boy? I didn't have the same equipment. I needed more paper bags.

Fortunately, I had a wonderful support team of family and friends. My son was born and has survived in spite of me. It only took once for me to learn how to diaper a baby boy and we have never had a problem with his ability to use the bathroom in the ensuing years. He could throw a ball better than I ever could by the time he was two.

I worried about all the things I couldn't provide my children as a single mom. The things I thought they needed, they developed or compensated for on their own. The true benefit of that time in our lives was the way it affected our relationships with each other. We grew very close because we did everything together. I couldn't leave them home when I went grocery shopping, to get a haircut or to the doctor's office. As a result we talked about everything. We learned patience and tolerance. We learned the meaning of pitching in for the sake of the family. And perhaps because we talked so much then, we still do today. My kids seek me out to share their daily news or ask advice on topics of all kinds. It's not that we don't disagree about things but they have come to expect and respect that my counsel will always have their best interests at heart.

We are now blessed with a two-parent arrangement as I married my best friend more than ten years ago. While I wouldn't want to be a single parent again, being one has provided blessings all its own. From necessity, you reinvent yourself everyday in order to meet changing demands. As the parent, you learn you are capable of just about anything if it's in the best interests of your children. Sleep is overrated; a spotless home is a luxury and free time is nothing but wishful thinking. The independence you achieve and then through example teach your children is a marvelous lesson for everyone involved. Having a partner certainly would have made things easier but the effects on our relationships and individual characters made it a rewarding time in our lives.