Single Parenting pt 1: It aint easy, no fun at all

I wrote one post early on about the division of labor at home with the kids and family life.  I don't care how you split up the labor, just split it up as you will be much saner in mind and I think both happier. One person can catch their second wind resting while the other is playing around doing duty, having fun with the kids.  This makes sense doesn't it? 

The problem is, how can you divide up the labor when you have nobody to divide it up with?  I know the divorce rate is high, but when I just read that according to divorcerate.org, 40 to 50 per cent of marriages in the US will end in divorce.  Whoa.  Why even get married?  Well, it depends on how old you are when you get married.  The older you are, the less of a chance it will end in divorce, and a lot of other variables,  but this is not what I wanted to talk about (thank goodness as divorce is just too sad a word for me).  What I wanted to talk about was the sheer difficulty of, the amount of work, of a one parent household. 

For the first time now a couple weeks ago, I experienced single parenting for a week and I think... its a bad idea.  The following is just a "short" example of how tough single parenting can be.   This post is going to be too long.  If you read the whole thing in one sitting withoug getting bored or going for a cup of tea, I salute you on your patience and your interest.  Many thanks.  

THE BACKGROUND
My wife was diagnosed with viral meningitis on a Wednesday in October.  She went to the hospital on Thursday and suddenly said she had to stay there for at least a week, maybe for two weeks or more.   Not to mention that my youngest daughter had gotten sick before my wife and was on antibiotics.  She really should have laid low and not gone outside at all.   So she was home from school all day. But I had to get my other daughter to school every day.  Which meant I had to take the sick girl along with us because I couldn't leave her at home alone.

I need to stress an important point.  I must say that I am very wary of people who experience something for a very short time and then write about it or talk about it as if they know every aspect.  That has happened to me when I asked a couple people when it was urgent to work at my job for the day.  They repeated their experience to me for years afterward as if they knew my business inside and out.  Their one day of work made them experts in my field.  So, what I mean to say is, I don't know what it is like to be a single parent.  From my very limited limited view it is even worse than what I experienced.  But it could be, once you get the hang of it, once you get in the groove, you start to be able to handle it.  Nope.  Not for me.  I don't want to go down that path.  It is against me, it is against how I want to bring up my kids and what I am most most certain they need:  A two parent household.  Sometimes the parents are out of sync and at odds with each other, but still loving and providing care for each other AND the kids, as much as they can.  A single parent household... I don't want to live that way more than I did.  Here is a sample why:

 THE MORNING
The days started at 6.25 am and I had to get both girls up, dressed and breakfasted by 7.35 when I had to walk my older daughter to school.  Usually I am getting up and preparing the breakfasts while my wife gets the girls dressed.  Now I had to do it all alone.  Luckily both girls did it themselves with me pushing them along.  My fashion sense is null, so I just let them wear what they chose themselves.  My wife would not do that.  I am sure they were not looking as good as when my wife chose their clothes.

The real pain came when I had to get them both out and walking to the school.  The youngest does not move so quickly and has to do everything ... just so.  And if she doesn't then she lapses into a fit.  So if you try to put her socks on her she doesn't like it.  And if you do put her socks on, she will be crying for ten or fifteen minutes that you did it and will probably take them off again.  But if you don't do it, she will be sitting there for five minutes in the process of putting on her socks.  I was trying to keep my patience, but the time kept on ticking ticking ticking into the future.  THIS time I had to be on a schedule.  Patience, unfortunately and sadly, got thrown out the door.  Against all that I have advocated before and STILL advocate:  Patience, patience, pa... put on the sock already will you?   Or else I will.

The worst day,... or one of them anyway, the littlest girl is in a fit because I had forcibly put on her coat which she had been deciding to put on for five minutes.  She hadn't even gotten to the stage of getting the coat on, she was still in the choosing the coat stage.  My problem is that I can`t get into the mindset of this three year old.  It was a big violation for me to put on her coat.  I am sorry about that. That brought on the first round of heavy duty crying, but we got out the door at 7.35.

I thought I would put my daughter in the stroller and wheel her through the streets like that woman in the Wizard of OZ who was on a mission to take Dorothy` s dog Toto.  I felt like her too.   It was all
whirlwind and heat.  But when I opened the door to outside I found it was raining outside and I didn't have a cover for the stroller and ten minutes in the rain would have gotten all of us soaked.  That would have meant flu or some other sickness on top of what my youngest daughter had and maybe for us healthy people too.  I couldn't risk it.  So I rolled the stroller back inside the building.  We live in an apartment building.  Just then my 80 year old neighbor was going up on the elevator.  I practically threw the stroller at her and asked her to take it up to our floor and just park it outside our apartment door.  All niceties and formalities also out the door.

Then I piled the girls into the car.  7.40 heading for 7.45.  And then the fr... strap, the seat belt for my littlest girl wouldn't reach, or wouldn't hold in the connector and I am sitting there struggling with it for three minutes until I decided that I cant do this and just asked my older girl to hold the seat belt over her in place and ... we ll hope for no problems.  Admittedly kind of illegal and dangerous.

I was in a hurry, but even when I am in a hurry, I never take it out on the road.  I am careful, no road rage here.   So I don't know where the vote of  no confidence from my youngest girl came from. She had just finished her crying session as she probably knew that there were bigger concerns but she said,  "Daddy, I don't want you to drive.  I don't like you driving".   Seriously.  I am a good driver.  I don't know where that came from.  She might as well have told me that she hated me and wanted a different parent.  Even worse, because she has said that before in different words, namely, "NOT YOU.  MOMMY".  So yes, I became rattled even more.   Settle down.  Keep your cool.  Its OK.  7.45.

And I did keep my cool.  Though I looked mournfully on as it hit 7.50 and I made a nominally bad turn onto the busy street instead of turning into the school street.  So I had to drive down the busy street for a hundred meters, make a left hand turn in front of traffic with no light and do a parallel parking two blocks on the other side of the school.  But I did it you know.  And in fact God took care of the little things and cleared the oncoming traffic for my left hand turn AND gave me a big space to parallel park in so it was no trouble.  Just like in the movies.  That was nice of the Almighty.  Because now it was 7.50.  8 o clock and she is late. (Althought note, I have been tricked before on this big space to parallel park.  I did it one late evening where no one was parked and found the next day that they were doing street cleaning on that street and all cars had to be off that street. I got a traffic fine.  So I guess i was owed for that trick, right?)

I have to interject here and explain the imperative of getting her to school on time.   Just the week before I had been at parent meetings with the teacher and the one thing I talked about with the teacher was... getting my little student to school on time.  The teacher was very nice about it, "Have you tried going to bed 15 minutes sooner?  She can be tired for the first class during the day.  That is OK.  Some of the students are".  Very accommodating, but, "I really want her in her seat by the first bell, not the late bell."  So, I didn't want to blow it just one week after meeting with her.

I parked, got them out of the car, got the littlest girl sitting on my shoulders so I could run with my older girl and ran through the rain.  She did get there by 7.55 and changed at her locker and ran up to her class.  I think she got to her class by 7.58.  Yes.   Unf.believeable.

But this was not fun.  No fun at all.  Normally I walk with my girl to school.  We hurry a little, but its mostly a casual walk where we smell the breakfast smells at a restaurant, or run on the mini golf courses a bit, and enjoy the mild Fall weather.  But no, that whole week, every morning was just rush rush rush.  There was no room for patience or enjoyment.  It was just a battle against the clock.

After the adrenaline hype I usually would get a cocoa with my littlest girl. Once we sat in a coffee shop and she drank a cocoa. I corrected my heart rate so it wasn't beating at 120 and got it back down to 60 bpm.  The cocoa was a nice reward and a nice aftermath THAT morning, but...

THERE IS NO WAY I WANT TO BE A SINGLE PARENT.

We came back home and the next battle started: Giving her 5 ml of antibiotics

to be continued......   

A picture of a nice school I liked