When I'm a mess, I still put on a vest with an "S" on my chest

"I'm going to be 33, divorced, raising two boys alone!"

 

This is what I screamed for the first six months, through terrified and desperate tears, at my friends, my parents, my sister, my therapist, a couple co-workers, and quite possibly the dog.

 

Two boys who will soon be teenagers, at that.

 

The reality that has come to be is that this is okay. Not as a synonym of ideal, but manageable. Sometimes rewarding. Daily exhausting. I remember having one day a conversation with the wasband, who kept repeating "I don't want it. I want to want it, but I don't want it." This while he was lying on our bed for the first time in months, after taking the kids to school that morning, which ended several days of interaction that left me hopeful things would be okay. I ran to Nashville's house first chance I could, when she was down the street from me, and sat in her family room repeating "I've made a huge mistake" over and over again. At that time, I could not imagine how I would survive heartbroken and partnerless with two children to lead through yet another painfully life-altering event.

 

But...here I am. I just kept waking up. Kept getting up. Kept keeping myself open to the possibility that my life's purpose was not to be His Wife, but to be Their Mother. Kept reminding myself that the promise for a daughter that was made to me before I got married had been broken, and maybe this was all because I am supposed to have a daughter one day. Kept trying to stand up straight and be the example for my children for what Acting From Love and Doing The Right Thing look like. Though at least one time every day I am fully arrested by a thought of "HOW am I going to make thisrandomlogisticalissueforwhichasolutionisnotquicklycomingtome work?" Then when the riddle is solved, I think "how do I keep pulling this off?"

 

First, I make a solicitation of support to their dad. One, because it is his responsibility to provide and care for these children as much as it is mine. Two, because they need every opportunity to spend time with him, instead of a grandparent, aunt, or babysitter. To his credit, he says "of course" the majority of the time, only denying me help if the Army has him doing something else. We've only had a couple instances of being denied for personal preferences, but when one party makes no secret of the homicidal considerations she is now making, the other party quickly readjusts.

 

The second option is to see if the live-in aunt, Seester, can back me up. Even though her youngest nephew treats her like she is his sister and not a person of authority and I'm certain I will come home and find her dangling him out her second-floor bedroom window by his ankles, she takes them on regularly. If that does not work, perhaps I can send them to a grandparent, ask a grandparent to come here, or find out if a grandparent will be in town anyway. You would be stunned to find out how often none of these solutions work out. For this, I have three tremendous sitters who have all survived a hazing and are willing, and sometimes enthusiastic, about taking care of the boys. Sitters do not sit for free, which is why sitters are asked last, and whenever I can get their dad to pay for this financial inconvenience by blaming him for the need to get a sitter, I do so.

 

Every day the boys get off the bus, change their clothes, have a snack and do their homework. They check in with their dad via text on any trouble they did or did not have during the day. On Tuesdays, Jake has taekwondo at 5:00, so I meet the sitter there at 5:30. On Thursdays, Jake has taekwondo at 5:00 in one location and Landen has baseball practice in another location. The sitter drops Jake off at taekwondo and takes Landen, who cannot be trusted to sportsmanlike conduct when unsupervised by someone I've put in charge, to baseball practice. Their dad picks up one and I pick up the other and he takes both of them to dinner. I eat cinnamon jelly beans for supper on Thursday nights.

 

Children expect food and clean clothes, and this is the second intense set of challenges. A crazy bloglady I sometimes read says that you should do a load of laundry every day. Now, I have no qualms about putting a load of clothes in the washer when I go to bed at night and putting them in the dryer when I get up in the morning. But in order to repeat that the next day, the clothes from the dryer must be removed, inevitably folded and put away. Once I actually do that, three or four days of laundry will pile up in a basket before I send it upstairs with the boys to put away. Mom's clothes? Pfft. Mom lives for two weeks or more out of a basket of clean clothes (sometimes folded,) a basket of dirty clothes and a stack of clothes-to-be-hung resting in a chair. She has never left the college habit of only doing her laundry when she runs out of clean underwear.

 

I wish they did not need to eat. Because it's not only the preparing and serving of the food, it's the cleaning post-cooking. On Sundays, I make a meal plan for the week and assess the pantry supply and go to the grocery store. On Thursdays, they eat with their dad. I usually abandon the meal plan one night a week and pick something up, either because the thought of coming home and standing in the kitchen to make something makes me weepy, or because, like tonight, I have forgotten a critical ingredient for the planned meal with no time to go to the store. I try to do like Martha Stewart says and clean as I cook. Also have the kitchen cleaned up by the time the boys go to bed at 9, so that I can sit with a brim-full glass of wine and watch a recorded show or two. At the latest, it gets done right after. The crazy bloglady says I should clean my counters every night, which I do, and shine my sink, which I do not. She's crazy.

 

Growing up, I did no chores. Ask my mother why. I could have very well refused to do them, or she could never have asked. Lucky for me, their dad has always insisted they do what they could by themselves, so they are learning to take care of new things as they get older. We have a chore chart, for which a completion of a certain number earns them an allowance every payday. They bring their dirty laundry down and put their clean laundry away, take the garbage to the cans and the cans to the street, unload the dishwasher, feed the animals, and make the rounds picking up all their sh!t they leave all over the house on a daily basis. They also pick up their room every night before they go to bed. This is the thing most people are most impressed by. It's because I am mean as a damn snake and can melt your skin off with just my eyes.

From Natalie Dee.

I do not clean my house with any regularity at all. Crazy bloglady says you should sweep/mop and vacuum your floors every day, which is why I'm convinced she's clearly unstable. I clean my house when I notice it needs it, and usually a couple days after that. When I can see via the angle of the sun that the floor beneath the console table is full of animal hair. When the ring in the toilet appears or the shower looks grimy. The first day I can smell the kitty litter, which is not very long because the cat is old as Methusela, so her outputs are horrid. When the tabletop dust changes the color of the furniture. Some things get done once or twice a week. Some things get done every other week or every three weeks. Some things only get done when my mother is coming. Judging me? Hire me a maid. General upkeep of the house is why I am selling it and getting something smaller and more manageable.

 

This lengthy diatribe only touches on the responsibilities of single parenthood, which is why my Facebook status this morning was that this is not for p***ies. There's animal care, doctor appointments, lawn maintenance, home repairs, getting it ready to sell, personal health and grooming, pharmaceutical needs, behavior management, maintaining the wine supply, and actually loving on my kids. I am not alone, and I know many single mothers who have been doing this with aplomb for much longer than me and still manage to smile in every photo. I bow to you.

 

We have to forgive ourselves the dirty floors and the dead houseplants and the inside-out underwear. I am one person, and I cannot neglect my kids because Martha Stewart needs to be able to eat off my floors. I also need sleep and the ability to remember to take my medicine and a damn haircut. The dust can sit for one more day so I can see my friends or watch six episodes of Designing Women with my sister. Everything I do, I do well. Everything else I will get to eventually.

 

It's not easy. It's not fun. It's not what I ever imagined or would have elected for myself. I was pushed into a painful and unfortunate set of circumstances, and I do not know how I function. If one more person tells me they would have killed themselves by now, I may drop dead on the spot. But all the alternatives to not doing all of it are much more negative than the blood, sweat and tears it actually takes to do it. We moms, single and partnered, are superhuman. Now, when I ask my kids if they want to ride with me or ride with dad, they want to ride with me. And that's pretty f***ing cool.