Single Parenting

Don’t go buying any rice or teeny tiny bubbles, no one here is getting married any time soon. Hell, no one here has a date any time soon. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think about the future and what it holds for me and for my kids. In my entire four and a half year career as a single mom I’ve never been on the husband hunt or on a quest for a dad for my kids. Even since their dad died, with my whopping three dates in the past year and a half, I have never even entertained the notion that someone I meet might be their “new” dad.

But the fact is, I did not expect to be full-time mom and dad to my kids as they grew up. I expected to take the good part of divorce — every other weekend off — with the bad — an ex and all that entails. I expected their dad to be doing the fatherly things, not me. And lately I’m realizing that when it comes to doing dad-things with a teenage boy, I’m a just a tad short on the testosterone.

I can handle the sex talks (don’t do it), the internet porn (don’t do it), and the drugs, alcohol and tobacco talks (don’t do it). We’ve pretty much mastered emotional breakdowns and heart-wrenching conversations. But tie a tie or combat some masculine itching and I crumble like a pile of Kinex and am as befuddled as my kid is when I ask him if the clothes on his floor are clean or dirty. Fact is, I have no clue, which would be made clear by the $48.00 worth of “otrimin” products I purchased at the Walgreens that loves me, and the websites and pamphlets I’ve accumulated on how to tie a tie. I liken the challenge of learning to tie a tie from a website to using a tampon for the first time using the illustrated instructions in the box. It’s not happening and it doesn’t matter who drew the roadmap. You need someone to show you, or in terms of the latter, at least be on the other side of the bathroom door cheering you on.

I will give credit where its due. I have male friends who have tried to teach me to tie a tie, to no avail. So, one of them just finally just tied it for me, so I could slip the tie over my son’s head, hold the knot, and pull. Way to get around the issue of the moment, but my son still can’t tie a tie.

And the shaving? That’s next. Because the mustache? I can see it. And there is no one to teach him to shave unless I send my dad a plane ticket. Which I think might be preferable to offering my kid a Lady Schick and scarring him, both literally and figuratively, for life.

So while my social life is non-existent, and I really don’t have the time, energy or interest to pursue a new round of E-dating disasters, I also can’t help but think how great it would be if there was a nice, Gilette-carrying, tie-tying man in my kids’ lives. And in mine.