This morning, as I was busying myself to get out the door and off to work, I heard bits and pieces of a story on npr about single parenting – the newest rising tend – “by choice” single fathering of children. Single Dads by Choice: More Men Going It Alone is the title. The story started out with the idea that most of us are familiar with single mothers who are struggling to parent without a father in sight and went on from there to seg’ into the main story. Now, just as a few decades ago when women decided they didn’t need a man around to be a mother, men are making the same choice. They are finding egg donors and surrogate women to help them fulfill the dream of being a parent even though there’s no Mother. Well, good for them. The hope that I have for any single parent is that they are able to find positive role models for their children – whether male or female. A child needs to see good models no matter the family dynamic at home. As I listened in and out I thought about the single parents that I know. A few have one parent or the other out of the picture almost completely, but a number of them have created visitation schedules so that the child/ren get time to spend with each parent. And, of course, I thought about my own story, my own circumstances.
My story entails a bad relationship that just had a more dramatic turn when “I got pregnant”, to quote the father. Names were called, fingers were pointed and hot angry tears were shed. Not quite Shakespearean, to a degree Greek, less Tennessee Williams, but dramatic and traumatic if truth be told. Besides my parents and a few friends my pregnancy was not the joyous experience I had imagined it would be growing up. Instead of being married and in a great loving relationship complete with home and white picket fence to go with it, or at least a great city apartment with a river view, I was unmarried and in a rather toxic relationship and apparently screwing everyone’s life up by being pregnant – this not only includes the father’s life, but the flatmate I was sharing an apartment with at the time. Nothing like a good shot of solid narcissism to let you know what really matters to a person.
But back to the single parenting thing. I’ve this great short person in my life that was determined to be born. And I wouldn’t want things to be different unless most of it could be different, which would make the out come different and the child different and I wouldn’t want Amelia to be anything less or more than what she simply – IS. Could I wish for better behavior out in public from time-to-time? Of course, but the essentials that make her who she is, those things, I would not change. And, right now, I would not even change the singleness of me. Because what being a single parent, for me, boils down to is not that I’m not married, not that I am doing it all single-handedly, or that I have no support or back-up. I am the main parent in Amelia’s life because someone made choices. I have physical custody (which is different that legal custody, but that’ll have to wait for another post at another time) – I get to make the really tough choices; “no, you don’t get to have desert until you eat the rest of your green beans”; “no, you can’t sit on the cat”; “let’s have banana splits for breakfast”. I “lay down the law”. I get to cry with her when she needs someone to cry with over hurt feelings, a bad scare or a scrapped knee. I get to be silly and dance to Jonathan Richman/Doris Day/Elgar, etc. at half blast (we have close neighbors and echo-y walls) in the living room. I get to create stick puppets of the character in Robin Hood for an afternoon showing. I get to involve her in the baking of Victoria Sandwiches. I get to participate in those magical moments when letters form into words and she wants to read me the bed-time story. I make sure she takes her vitamins every day (and she reminds me of mine!). I watch over her needs, but we also have really wonderfully supportive and loving people in our lives that help out and will influence her growth and development. I love that. And though being a single mum might not have been what I ever thought of myself as doing – I’m doing it as only I know how. And I wouldn’t want to keep her from any of what she’ll go through with her father when she visits, or any of the bumps and joys when she’s at home with me merely because I had one doozy of a lousy experience with one man and find myself – a single parent.
Wendy's Tale this Side of Neverland 