Awhile back, a good friend introduced me to a women who has been working on a series of books for single moms. My initial assumption was that this woman must be a single mom. The only people who talk about single moms are other single moms or people interested in victimizing us.* She was too nice for that so she had to be a single mom. I just knew it.

The truth is, she was not.

She was once a single mom, but is now happily married and a very successful business coach. She was creating a series about single moms because she saw the way that people talked about single moms, and wanted to create an outlet where she could profile the ones that people don’t talk about; The successful business owners and corporate ladder climbers. The women who balance custody schedules, business meetings, and budgets.

She asked me if she could include me in her new book, “The Single Mom Gets Rich,” and I quickly reminded her that I wasn’t rich.

I promise you that this book isn’t full of fluff and aspirational stories that no one could ever compete with. It is full of practical advice for starting a business, building a career, or even figuring out what your next steps should be.

So if you know a single mom who is starting from scratch, here is a gift for her.

*This is a general assumption from what I have seen. Don’t get mad. 

1. It can take them up to twenty minutes to put a shirt on in the morning.
2. They are sticky. Like, always.
3. Things that would have mortified me as a child are HIL-A-RIOUS.
4. There is a sound effect for everything.
5. Even if something has its own sound effect, you can still (and must) make extra sound effects.
6. They don’t care if they have food all over their face.
7. But they won’t wear a shirt that looks funny/feels funny/isn’t cool.
8. They will eat everything in your fridge. Except the broccoli.
9. They are so tough. They could stand up to the biggest of monsters.
10. Until they aren’t so tough and you realize they are more tender than tender.

What am I missing from the list?

I want to tell my stories.

In fact, before I ever meet you I probably have chosen stories I want to share with you and practice how I will tell them to you. My best stories hand picked for you.  And then I see you and get nervous and ramble about something un-related to both of us and wonder why I can’t chill out.

Even writing this makes me feel embarrassed.

I took a vacation day today.

I woke up early and put on a dress and suit jacket. I showered and fixed my hair and put on lipstick. All of things I don’t do on work days. Ironic right?

I dropped Aiden off at school and felt powerful walking in all dressed up. (as opposed to the make-up less face and Gap t-shirt I normally sport)

I bolted from the school and drove an hour to meet with a room full of brilliant accomplished ladies. We brainstormed events and speakers for the upcoming year and I got excited to be apart of something so great.

The meeting ended and I hurried back home to swipe Aiden up from school. He had an appointment to get his very first filling and I was already late. I picked lunch up on our way to the dentist and my anxiety started creeping up as I realized I was late. What if we miss his appointment? What if they dont have time to get everything done? What if? What if? What if?

But we arrived. (right on time I might add) and everything went fine.

That is a lie.

They didn’t tell us that they normally don’t do fillings on the first visit. We chose this dentist to handle his filling because he was so nervous. Oh my gosh he was so nervous. I realized they might not do the fillings that day and I wanted to yell at them and demand things from them because I was so frustrated.

I did neither.

After talking for a while they decided to do two fillings today and informed me that I would have to pay 20% of the total cost of the filling that day. Right there. So I made a call and had the less than comfortable conversation with Aidens other parent and started re-working my monthly budget in my head.

They walked me back to the room where Aiden was chatting with the dentist and I could see the fear in his eyes and feel the nervousness in my heart. I was working numbers in my head and dealing with my twisted stomach as I watched his eyes as Little Nemo blared in the background. My heart started racing faster and faster and from the look on the dentists face I looked more scared than Aiden.

Finally it was over and everything was fine.

Except me.

My heart was racing and I couldn’t stop my mind from spinning. I tried deep breathing and music and wondered if I needed Xanax or if I should take up smoking or maybe I could take a nap or start running. or …or..or…

I am still trying to calm my mind as I write this and every part of me is wanting to never hit publish.

A dear friend has asked us to try and just write. I really avoid this type of exercise because my words just spewed onto a page are rarely if ever beautiful. Baby steps people. Baby steps.

We lived in the south and the concrete would burn the bottoms of my bare feet as I ran around the driveway. We had honey suckle and blackberries growing in the yard and a clothes line that seemed to always have sheets covering it. There was a fence all the way around and my best friend and I would holler at each other from across the wire.

My dad had a Harley and I was petrified by its power. I would sit on it and squeem away when it started up. It was bright yellow and on his way home one night he hit a car. Flipped right over the hood and hobbled away with a few stitches in his foot. My dad became an instant super hero in my mind.

He would spend hours in the driveway trying to put that bike back together. The yard smelled like grease and beer and swear words would feel the air. I ran through the yard with our dog and felt safe. My dad could take on anything.

My friend from Illinois passed away and my mom told me as we walked home from kindergarten. The trees hung over top of us and the southern sun peeked through. I tried to imagine God and the bigness of the world and tried to picture things that my mind could not grasp. My great grandmother died later that year (or maybe earlier) and the same thing happended then.

I tried to imagine God.

I tried to imagine nothingness.

The world felt big.

My friend had a tree and we could climb to the tippy top and not fall off. He had a pool and a dalmation and his father worked at the bowling alley. We got to go in the back of the alley one day and I remember the balls making their way through the machines.

There were boys who lived next door. They were probably in highschool. They would play basketball outside and I would watch them and pretend I wasn’t.

My dad went to solmalia and he was shot. I was laying in my parents bed and it was late at night. I could hear my mom talking and crying which made me realize this was probably a big deal. I didn’t cry. I had no idea where he was and what was happening but whatever it was he could take it on.

The world felt small and safe.

And he was safe; we just didn’t know it yet.

We had an icecream truck and I was obsessed with the Ginger Bread man.

Run run as fast as you can you can’t catch me I’m the gingerbread man.

We had colorful plastic bears we would count and place on cardboard shapes. I would run around the playground and sing country songs.

I was going to be a country singer.

I had a my little pony lunchbox and my mom would make me wear stirrup pants. I would pull the stirrups over my shoes and walk on them until they broke. She teased my hair for special occasions and swept it up into a side ponytale. I knew, even then, that I looked absolutely ridiculous.

I don’t know if all of these things happended when I was five or six or seven but they were somewhere in that time of  life. This was my childhood and memories swirl through my mind as I think of that time and I can’t help but wonder what Aiden will remember.

What images will swirl through his mind in nineteen years.

I am walking into the same school that I went to many years ago. My son walks in front of me and we search out his classroom, his desk and his first ever locker.

After kisses and hugs and a billion “I love yous;” I head home to start my work day. I sit at my desk for a while and try to figure out where the time went but for once it made so much sense.

He waved for the first time when I was headed to class at a junior college.  He was learning to crawl and listening to Dora in the background as I cooked dinner and did homework. He was taking first steps as I ran out the door to work nights at the bar.  There were trips to the zoo and moves to new houses and first words and vacations and changes.

I feel like it was just yesterday when I was bringing him home from the hospital.

But at the very same time I feel like that was another lifetime.

The truth is, we grew up together, my child and me.

As he learned to walk and talk and go potty on the big boy potty I learned about school and growing up and friends and first jobs and careers.

Last December I graduated from college and this summer, the summer after college was un-eventful and fast and quiet and we both waded in the pool that life changes are.

And now he is off to kindergarten.

It doesn’t feel like a major life change, but maybe that is because we have had so many major life changes in the past five years that they come and go with little notice.

It simply feels like a next step. It is time for him to learn reading and writing and math and it time for me to learn…to learn…to learn things that adults do?

I imagine that my relationship with my child is different than most mother/son relationships. In the same way that I am protective of him he seems to protect me. In the same way I am learning new steps and new moves he is too.

We grow together and learn from each other and I feel like one day we are going to look back on this journey and see how big it really was.

He was making a wave pool.

Running in circles faster and faster. Each time around the pool he was giggling a little harder and I was covered in a little more water.

I was trying to read my book and the sun was in my eyes. There was a bug crawling a little to close to my glass of water and I couldn’t get my clothes wet because I had to coach t-ball in a couple of hours.

Suddenly, I am telling him to stop running. Quit splashing. I DON’T WANT TO GET WET.

And then I looked up and he was sitting there in the pool with the biggest smile on his face as the waves moved around him slowly.

Suddenly it hit me.

This isn’t going to be forever.

He won’t always be this small. Making waves in his inflatable pool wont always be the highlight of his day.

I will be sitting outside wondering where the squealing child went and why my book is so dry.

And I smiled back at him and told him to keep going.

Make the waves.

I don’t know why it takes these moments to remind me of how fast childhood passes.

I can’t cook. I burn cookies and over season everything. Well I over season the stuff that I even cook long enough so that it is fully cooked.

I can’t sew. I cant craft because I have no coordination. I can’t knit because I have texture issues that leave me wanting to curl into fetal position and die everytime I feel yarn. Or cotton. Or felt. {{shudder}}

I can clean. But I really don’t have a desire to. I have no problem moving trash and random pieces of clothing out of the way to find the drivers seat of my car. I don’t mind tripping over stuff to find my bed and I have eaten cereal out of a pot with a measuring cup more times than I will admit. I have learned along the way tricks to keep my house functional. But it was a learning curve.

But my favorite thing about being a mother is none of these things. Shocking right?

My faveorite thing about being a mother is seeing myself in my child.

I was an incredibly difficult child. I didn’t believe in authority figures and fought to have power in situations that I felt powerless in. I would throw myself on the ground in the middle of grocery stores. I would bang my head on the hard floors and scream until my mother would either give in or drag me to the front of the store. I was sassy and bossy and would fight tooth and nail for the upper hand. Send me to my room? Fine. I would lie on my bed and kick the wall. clunk. clunk. clunk. clunk. for minutes or hours depending on how long you left me there.

Aiden is much more chill than I was as a child. Thank God.

But as an adult I have a whole other set of lovely features. I have personal space issues. I only want to be touched or sat close to if I initiate it. Meaning if you hug me and I wasn’t expecting it my body will turn stiff as a board.  I don’t like to talk during car rides.  I like to be in control of situations and I need a schedule and plan and details and step by steps for everything. (Including nights when you are going out with your friends and going with the flow is the cool thing to do)

Aiden is much more like me as an adult.

He pitter patters into my room every morning and asks me to snuggle him. He curls up with me when he is cold or sad or bored. But if I I dare try to sneak a hug when he isn’t expecting it? Stiff as a board. And if I dare try to talk to him while I am driving? He requests that I turn the music up. And God forbid I try and take him somewhere without giving him the run down of where we are going and with who and for how long and what is going to happen there? There are many questions asked.

I see myself shine through him and I feel like I know what he is thinking and feeling most of the time. I see him struggling for power when he is clearly defeated. I see him wanting to know what is next when that is impossible. I see myself and I feel my feelings over again through watching him.

I can’t cook or craft or clean but I love being a mom.

I rarely plug this blog with mentions of clients because I know that readers don’t really enjoy that. Right now P&G is working with the Special Olympics  as part of the Thank You Mom campaign. Out of all of the campaign that I have had a chance to work on this is one of my favorites.  For everyone that “Likes” their fan page P&G will donate $1 to support the USA’s Special Olympics’ team journey to Athens—up to $250,000 above their other contribution.  The most exciting thing about this fan page is the conversations happening on the wall. Stories are being shared from other mothers and mothers are being thanked for their sacrifices.

I mentioned it above but just in case the FTC has any question. P&G is a client of DeVries for which I am employed.

Quick example.

I am scrolling through HARO this afternoon and come across this request:

“Are you a single mom who is the ultimate caretaker and homemaker?
Do you practically work around the clock, taking care of all your
kids’ needs, managing the house, and juggling multiple
responsibilities? Would you give anything just to have one day
off, and have zero responsibilities? Do friends or family tease
you about being tired and rundown and have no clue how hard and
how challenging your days really are? Does it seem impossible for
you to get a break even for an hour? If it’s been months or even
years since you’ve taken some time away from your kids to indulge
in some ‘you’ time, we want to hear from you!”

Seems fair enough. I continue scrolling and come across this next request:

“Looking for single dads in the Chicago area. Someone who is doing
his best to raise his child(ren) Could be a dad that lost his
wife, a divorced dad, or dad that never got married but made the
commitment to raise his child(ren) by himself.”

Why is it that we are only interested in praising single moms who work around the clock and look frazzled because they work so hard but we are willing to praise any single dad who is “doing his best?” This isn’t just a rant defending women but one that is defending men. We discuss co-parenting and equal rights for men and women but we still have sub-par expectations for how well a man could possibly parent? Why aren’t we looking for the single dads who are the ultimate caretakers and dedicate their lives to their children? Why aren’t we looking for single moms who are “doing their best?”

Comments welcome.

What I found were tears welling up in my eyes.

When people ask me about single parenting and “how I do it” I never really know what to say. I approach it with the logistics and logistically single parenting isn’t all that hard. Aidens dad is very involved with him and I get a few days a week to spend by myself. The day-to-day work of parenting is the same as any parent faces. I do it the same way you do it.

What I don’t look at is the emotional part of single parenting. The part of witnessing something so magical and not being able to really share it. This video says it better than I ever could.

(go get some tissues)

Staying With Vegas from karl brandstater on Vimeo.