Man Up, Mom!

I spent most of the month of April mimicking a single working mother. Although my dh had not died, deserted, or divorced me, he did take a permanent full time position in Wichita, KS, over 1600 miles away from our two dogs, our 4 1/2 year old twins, and me. He had received the official offer letter on a Tuesday and three days later he had packed up everything he needed and driven away. He had planned on flying back later in the month to take care of the children while my job called me out of town for a week. Then, when I returned, he would also return to his new home in Kansas. We would be ships passing in the night. Because it was cost prohibitive to visit every weekend, we planned his return trips here only on the weekends when we needed to transition childcare duties, me heading out of town and him heading in. 

It wasn't our first, second, or third choice arrangement. It was our last-ditch-effort choice. But I was burning out. Extra work days during the week and occasionally weekends, daily activities with the kids, school activities, lessons, and my unemployed husband desperately scouring the local job market without success were all taking a toll on me. We presumed that once he secured a stable salary, ANYWHERE, then I could cut back on my work hours and hopefully regain some portion of my lost sanity. Of course in the immediate aftermath of his departure, it was quite the opposite of the relief I so desperately needed (Running on Fumes). 

I didn't cry immediately after he left nor for several days afterwards. I was too overwhelmed by my suddenly single parenthood status. The kitchen sink sprang a leak two days after he left. The dog ran away. The kids decided to clean up all the accumulated dog poop in our backyard from the last month -- using our precious grill cookware. I was suddenly on garbage duty (previously his job), nighttime kitchen clean up (again, his job), and every other task that used to be a shared responsibility, from planning meals and play dates to enforcing regular baths and nightly bedtime routines. Truthfully, I was in shock for those first few days. I was fortunate enough to have wonderfully sympathetic friends, fellow moms who knew all too well how much I depended on dh. They brought me food, invited us to dinner, and watched my kids when my hastily put together childcare plans still couldn't cover my expanding work schedule. Most of all, though, when the tears finally did come, they offered shoulders to cry on and kind words of sympathy as I blubbered over my bad moments. By the second week as a single parent, I cried every day over something, whether it was stressing out over getting to the Easter egg hunt on time, or getting down on my hands and knees yet again because my careless son casually spilled another glass of milk all over the floor, or stripping the pee-stained sheets off my bed when late for school because all three of us had co-slept in it the night before. In the midst of it all, I was vaguely aware that single working mothers do exist in the world and they manage to make it all work without crying every day. But by now, I was wallowing in a pit of self pity out of which I could not seem to get a foothold.

Two weeks after his departure, dh returned while I headed out of town, relieved for the first time to be alone in a nice quiet hotel room where someone else makes the bed and straightens up the room. True, I was still working 40 hours a week but when I came "home" at the end of each day, I had nothing to do except take care of myself. For the public record: "I missed my husband and my children terribly the entire time I was gone!" The truth: It was kind of nice.

The good news is that dh was miserable in Kansas without us. So he recently renewed his efforts to find a local position here and this time he was successful! Hooray! But I am still reeling from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) from my brief stint as a single working mother, an experience which I tended to lament quite frequently. In fact just the other day I was relating my tale of woe to another mother at my children's preschool, an acquaintance whom I am slowly getting to know through our brief exchanges when picking the kids up from school. As I unfolded my tragic tale to her, she listened very politely, and then responded with a calm, "Well, yeah, I DO know what you mean." Duh. I had forgotten that she is indeed a single working mother. And unlike me, her husband who passed away last year will most definitely not be returning. I felt a bit foolish when I suddenly remembered her circumstance and the tragedy of her recently departed spouse. In all fairness, the reason I had forgotten about her single parenthood-ness is that, unlike me, she does not wear it on her sleeve. There was no evocation of pity or sympathy for her plight. Neither was it an unpleasant topic to be avoided. She conversationally explained to me how she had been functioning as a single working mom to her two young boys for a while as her husband's health had declined. She conceded that, like me, she had been overwhelmed in the beginning but now she took it all in stride. Hmm. Suddenly my pity pot wasn't so comfortable to sit on any more.

Then this past weekend, we took the kids camping with their preschool. They had a wonderful time running around like wild animals, the grown ups had a wonderful time sipping schnapps by the campfire, and there really wasn't much to complain about. In the wee hours of the night as the fire dwindled, I sat with a couple of moms who happened to be Slavic. As the conversation meandered, one of them, a lovely Ukrainian woman, related to me all that her grandmother had endured, from war to famine to the horrors of an oppressive Soviet regime where the solution to all problems discordant to the state was to shoot first and ask questions later. Like the single widow I had spoken with previously, there was no self-pity or sentimentality in her conversation, just a blunt statement of events and circumstances untinged by pathos. There's nothing like a Ukrainian woman to kick me off my pity pot for good!

And just to make sure the lid of that pot stays firmly nailed shut, I recently read "Good Enough is the New Perfect: Finding Happiness and Success in Modern Motherhood" by Becky Beaupre Gillespie and Hollee Schwartz Temple. This book is chock-full of examples of working moms who chucked their pity pots out the window a long time ago, including a single mother who is also a top executive at a leading public relations firm. She spends at least one night a week away from her daughter with whom she is very close. While I am typically in the throes of lamentation over leaving my children for my away work assignments, this mom simply says, "This is the job I have, and I have to do it." How very Slavic.

These inspiring mothers deal with the same frustrations and joys of balancing their work lives with their home lives. They just choose to focus less on giving the frustrations center stage and more on enhancing the joys of what they do have. They are problem solvers, entrepreneurs, the proverbial go-getters. There doesn't seem to be a victim among them. They aren't afraid to experiment and they aren't afraid of failure because, as all successful people know, failures are simply opportunities to learn and improve.

I am thrilled that dh is back home with us. With his return, I can feel my blood pressure beginning to return to normal. I have always known his contribution to our family is invaluable which is why I was so upset to lose it even for a short period of time. Thankfully my foray into single parenthood seems to be over but the future is always uncertain, especially in this unfriendly economy. Though I wouldn't choose to do it again, if I had to I now know I can do it. But this time I would leave the self-pity behind.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book to review as a member of From Left to Write. All opinions expressed are my own. You can read other members' posts inspired by Good Enough is the New Perfect at From Left to Write on book club day, May 10th.