In which I ponder…single parenting

October 9, 2015October 9, 2015 / howtobemeagain / Leave a comment

I consider myself fortunate to have found myself a single parent when my children were 14 and 12 years old and not when they were younger. The sheer volume of work, every minute of the day, that very young children generate must be overwhelming on your own, and I take my hat off to the amazing mums and dads who do it.

Occasionally, over the years I have had friends tell me that they have been a ‘single parent’ this week.

‘John’s been away on business for 4 days, so I’ve been a single parent too’, they say.

Anyone who is actually a single parent will recognise this sort of attempt at joining your (not particularly desirable) club, and it’s well meaning, of course. Any time spent caring for children alone can be exhausting.

But of course, this isn’t really what single parenting is.

Single parenting is parenting with no prospect of anyone taking equal responsibility for those tasks. Ever. There is no one coming in 3 or 4 days to give you a break. There is no one at the end of a phone to tell you you’re doing a good job and they’ll be home soon. And of course, it’s not just the parenting. You will be doing all that mumming or dadding alone, and then absolutely all of the other responsibilities of adult life and of householders will be exclusively yours too. Going to work (that bit is pretty easy really), paying the bills, sorting out the tax, doing the housework, maintaining the car, maintaining the garden, maintaining the house, doing all that household admin. All yours and yours alone. Lucky you! No one is going to run that errand for you while you cook the dinner, or run quickly round with the hoover. No one is going to sit on the phone for an hour trying to sort out a problem with your phone bill while you make a start on the laundry. No wonder single parents are so knackered.

Post separation/divorce parenting for me has turned out to be quite different to how I had imagined. There has been no 50:50 split, not even every other weekend relief. Six evenings a month are spent with their father and his new partner – if they are not away on holiday or on business, which is often. No half the holidays each. No attendance at parent’s evenings and one long weekend in Melbourne for my son and 5 days on the Gold Coast for my daughter being the sum total of holidays spent with their father in nearly 5 years. And when he is not well, he cancels. Oh how I’ve wished this worked the other way…All this is his loss, of course. But it has meant that the burden of working out arrangements which balance my work and half decent parenting have been…challenging.

As they’ve gotten older, of course, the need to be there in a supervisory capacity has reduced, but the need to have a presence, to exhibit my commitment to parenting them and my availability to them has to some extent gotten greater. Through these teenage years they need to know you are there, that you love them and that they are your priority at all times, even when they are being – quite frankly – a bit dreadful.

So it’s not really been the tasks that are so exhausting. No amount of food preparation, taxi driving, laundry, homework nagging, concert and sport watching and cleaning up compares to the sheer overwhelming responsibility of it all. The agony of decisions, for example, about where they can drive, with whom, at what sort of time of night, is left entirely up to me. Which parties they can attend. What time they should be home. Who they can hang out with. I could go on. Obviously the children always think I am being over cautious and I probably am – I have no-one to run these decisions past. There is no one to say – don’t worry, they’ll be fine…and then to sit up with you allaying your fears when they are late and not answering their phones.

I’ve never felt the loneliness of being the single mother of a teenager quite so keenly as on the occasion of my daughter’s 16th birthday party. If I had any advice to other parents about 16th birthday parties, it would be to strongly advise against them based on my experience, but suffice to say that by 9.45pm I had closed said party and contacted parents to collect their children. As if I didn’t already feel terrible enough about it all (and with the distance of time, it was not soooo bad – some smuggled-in alcohol and a couple of drunkards), in a conversation with a father after the event, he said to me – in a tone that could only be described as judgemental and patronising –

‘I understand you are a single mother’

and then went on to suggest that in view of this I should have known not to hold this party. Because obviously there was only one way this could possibly go, given that I am a single mum…

Over time I’ve developed my own system to check out my decisions in the parenting realm. I ask myself – if the thing I am afraid of happening, actually happened – if they crashed the car, went missing, got hideously drunk and did something silly – would I feel comfortable explaining to other people (including their father) what safeguards I had put in place to prevent this from happening? It’s not foolproof but it helps. I’ve explained it to the children, and they seem to accept it. I’ve never been the parent of young adults before, so I’m just feeling my way…

I’ve been so very, very lucky to have great children, who actually have given me very little to worry about. But all parents know that this doesn’t stop us from worrying. Sometimes I think I’ve done a good job, they are nearly done – it looks like I am going to be able to send them out into the world safely and as great human beings. But I know there is still time for it to go wrong and that, in fact, parenting is never over.

What is sure though, is that I wouldn’t change a minute of any of it. Being a mum and raising my two children will, without a doubt, be my greatest achievement, my greatest joy, and the absolute best use of my time, my energy and the space in my brain.

And God knows, as I get closer and closer to the moment when they both fly the nest, I know I’m going to miss this part of my life terribly.

In which I ponder….loneliness

August 3, 2015August 3, 2015 / howtobemeagain / 1 Comment

It was a beautiful day in Sydney on Sunday. Middle of winter and 26 degrees. I ran around in the morning sorting out washing and going to the supermarket so that I would be able to spend some time walking the dog from Bondi to Bronte in the afternoon. The weather was so lovely my shorts were reclaimed from summer clothing storage, and the hordes were out on the coastal path.

Sounds like a pretty nice day,eh?

But sometime after lunch, a little dark cloud settled above my head, and I couldn’t help thinking, not for the first time, how nice it would be to share the wonderful things in life with someone.

I’ve mentioned before that people who are married or in de facto relationships often express envy about my single life. They imagine the freedom of not having to consider others, of having the remote control for the tv for themselves, and of not having to share their bar of chocolate with anyone. They imagine that my life is more exciting than theirs, that I am out and about at restaurants and bars and events. And indeed I am, some of the time. But for a great deal of the time I am on my own.

There is not much time for the imagined glamorous life of the singleton in between the full time job and the every day domesticities of being a parent and a householder. The weekend is often a race against time trying to get all of the household necessities completed and enjoy some time with the children whilst still managing to do at least something that vaguely looks like having an independent social life. Sometimes I don’t manage it.

And I hesitate to talk about how isolating I can find my life, on the other side of the world from home and family, and how lonely I sometimes feel. There is a weird stigma related to loneliness in the 21st century – as if my loneliness must stem from being socially inept, or unlikeable, or both. I feel I shouldn’t be lonely and I should be out there enjoying every moment of my life, because in so many ways I am very lucky. Feeling lonely feels and sounds a lot like a failure.

In addition to this, it’s my experience that admissions of loneliness are often interpreted as neediness by other people, as if having needs – like spending time with other adults and making social connections – meant that there was something wrong with you. Recent research though has suggested that loneliness may well be our next big public health issue, on a par with obesity and drug abuse. It can also increase your risk of death by a sobering 26%. To be fair, I think I’d rather die fat and high than lonely…

A month or so ago I was made redundant. A couple of hours afterwards, I had to make a much valued colleague and friend also redundant. I can report that being made redundant is actually vastly preferable to making other people redundant, but the reason I mention this is that as you can imagine, in the scale of things, this was a pretty crappy day. It would have been nice to know that there was someone to tell about this, who would be there to give me the hug I needed when I got home and perhaps to make a cup of tea or pour me a glass of wine and tell me everything was going to be ok.

However, what actually happened was that just when I was about to leave work I got a text message from my daughter asking when I would be home. I asked her why and got the following message

‘I need to talk to you about my life. I feel like I need guidance or something – I just feel really unmotivated and crap and like a kind of failure and I don’t know I need help’

So although I could almost have written this message myself at that moment, I went home and gave her a cuddle while she cried a bit and we sorted out her life. I didn’t mention I’d been made redundant and then the evening continued much as usual – I made dinner, made sure everyone was ok, and then once they withdrew to their rooms and their laptops, I considered the white terror of being an unemployed single mother of two in silence, alone in my room.

It’s ironic because I used to like spending time on my own, I suppose because it was an occasional relief from being constantly accompanied by either children or husband. I still do like it though. I hate clothes shopping with other people. A night alone on the sofa with a bag of chips watching a movie is still a favourite pasttime. But it turns out you can get too much of a good thing.

Thankfully I have not yet reached the point where my loneliness outweighs my selectiveness in finding someone to share my bag of chips with and I don’t think I will. I’m just getting better and better at finding other things with which to fill my life – and if it all gets too much in the end, there is always overeating and drugs…

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PS – in the restructure that had precipitated the redundancies I was appointed to a new, more interesting role. All’s well that ends well.

In which I ponder…love, family and distance

July 28, 2015July 29, 2015 / howtobemeagain / 2 Comments

When we are young, we imagine we are invincible and, unless forced by circumstance, we rarely consider our mortality. In middle adulthood (I think this is where I’m at now, although some – including myself – might want to discuss whether I’m actually an adult, but I’m certainly in the middle of something), those of us who are lucky enough to have them around, kid ourselves that our parents are immortal.

I’ve not always had the greatest of relationships with my parents, in particular my mother. But the passing of time, and in particular the experience of parenthood has taught me to be more tolerant and more grateful for what I have. All parents are just doing the best they can at the time, with the tools they’ve got.

I love my own children with a passion and a depth I did not know was possible until I had them. And I can remember then having an epiphany about my parents – realising that they must feel like this about me too.

Moving to the other side of the world means that visits are infrequent, although I have been fortunate to have seen my family at least once a year during the 8 years I have been in Australia. The time passing between visits, though, means that those incremental signs of change and ageing that can go unnoticed when you see someone regularly are visited upon you starkly every time you meet.

For my dad, this has meant his hair has gotten whiter, and he’s become a little grumpier. His wit is still as sharp as ever and he is still in demand for his professional knowledge on boards and the like, and for his local activism and advocacy. Adventurous too – he just got back from Machu Picchu. We will gloss over the unfortunate incident involving alcohol related but apparently elegant (according to him anyway) pirouetting on the local station platform. Suffice to say, dad is not much different to how he’s ever been but during the time passing between two visits 18 months apart, my Mum seemed to get smaller, a bit frail and rather muddled.

However, it is one thing facing the mortality of one’s parents, which is in the natural order of things. It is quite another watching your brother and the rest of your family deal with a terminal diagnosis for his beautiful 11 year old son when you feel you are too far away.

I’ve learnt through the experience of emigrating that love, family and friendships recognise no borders, particularly in these days of technology and easy (ish!) travel. In many ways I feel as connected as I was when I was only round the corner or a few hours drive away. Social media allows us to continue to have a window into the lives of people thousands of miles away on a minute to minute basis, and Skype and texting and other applications mean that chatting is frequent. But there are some ways of expressing love that do not translate well across hemispheres. The loving touch, the hug, a much needed cuddle. Picking up a prescription and dropping it round, helping out with the shopping, turning up with an unexpected bottle of wine…how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

I can’t help wondering if I am on the right side of the world. I love Australia and I have made a life here, but when the inevitable happens, will I feel I loved Australia so much it was worth sacrificing time with the people I love – and who love me? Will my annual visits provide enough memories to sustain me when they are gone? Am I doing enough to support my family?

I’m not sure that I know the answer to these questions but I do know that I am not the first, and will not be the last, to consider them. They are the dilemma, the pain and sorrow of immigrants all over the world. I suppose I just have to hope that I have enough time to decide.

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My nephew has been diagnosed with Battens Disease and you can read about his brave struggle here.