Archive for April, 2009

OK, it isn’t always abject. But pushing a stroller that has lost its suspension, through the rain with one hand and holding an umbrella in the other, balancing a bag of doughnuts from one handlebar feels a bit like a scene from a movie I am not yet ready to star in. Things have changed readers. I am a freshly separated (single) mother now and have been since September or so. Sorry, I haven’t written a blog since then, it’s been a deep and consuming adjustment and so much of what has happened is outside the realm of the book I wrote. That glamour girl on the cover is not pushing with one hand!

Single mother: wasn’t that a term I used to be a little cynical about in the media? Madonna, Angelina and Kate Hudson…single mothers. I always went UMPH and YEAH SURE! And now, well, I don’t care who you are or how many nannies you have, a single mother is a special kind of person facing special challenges. She’s got, in the words of an infamously crass song by AC/DC, balls. Cos’ she needs them. Not more cajones than a partnered mama but a very particular kind of responsibility. Most of the time, well, it’s just down to you. At first this feels really enormous. When properly living alone for the first time, my son and I got really sick. Perhaps it was just bad planning but with no immediate family and Cello’s dad away working for months, I felt like the earth was swallowing us whole. It was miserable and I became hyper-vigilant. There was no room for clumsiness, illness, mistakes, accidents or even the odd hangover. Once again, just like when Marcello was newborn, my body became the mother ship. And with these changes, of course, came guilt. Massive, sweeping and tidal. Motherhood is anxious enough without feeling like you have placed a chasm in front of your child’s feet. 

Guilt and also loneliness. You feel alone because, suddenly, you feel very different. You only learn what your ideals for married life were when you leave it burning and smoked out behind you. One month after the break up having to attend parent teacher night was galling. No-one knew my situation but I felt, skinless, naked in public and weirdly shamed. Happy couples, married parents with newborns, men and women that looked like they were embalmed in honey, half smiles fixed on their faces and me…in a low cut Issa dress, going outside to pretend I was having a cigarette when I really was just leaking tears. Not tears of self pity but of loss and grief. My mother and father have been married since 1963. I looked up to them, I knew compromise inside out, and I didn’t plan on breaking the mould. Of giving my son the dis-jointed dance that is co-parenting. Mummy House. Daddy house. Both your houses, love, both yours.

Right now I am grateful that time is a swift healer. Because as spring approaches, life is congealing back together. Limping into step. I try to take any potential for moody introspection (Friday night alone with son at supermarket, IKEA etc..) and turn it into some sort of adventure. When it’s not a boisterous Daddy night I try to wrestle more and not wimp out with flimsy lazy mummy moves. Last night Marcello almost knocked my front tooth out. It’s hard to be a five foot four bear on all fours but here’s to macho motherhood! That son will make a man out of me yet. 

And, in a beautiful twist, I connect even more deeply with the close girlfriends of mine who have been doing this solo mama act since their kids were born and have especial respect for lovely Naomi, raising four boys alone in an Australian country town, with such wit, invention and gusto. Clearly I share a quarter of her stress. When things get tight I ask myself “What would Naomi do?” But fear not this isn’t about to become the newly separated mother blog.  I just felt I ought to share what’s going on NOW and to create a space for your single motherhood stories. Good, bad and even ugly…Tell me where you are challenged mamas, we have a lot to share. And Kate Hudson if you are reading this, right on.

HAPPY SPRING

XXX ANNA