My friend’s mother just had a heart attack. A small one, and she’s recovering well. But besides the shock and concern my friend has for her mother, she’s lost her mother’s help with her two children, and her life has quickly become that much harder.
Like me, my friend is a Single Mother by Choice, having arrived late to motherhood without a partner. She had two children using an anonymous donor, and her parents have been supportive in both emotional and practical ways. Until the heart attack, her mother drove her children to many after school and weekend activities, enjoying the time with her grandchildren and helping close that gap all working parents feel between the end of the school day and the end of the work day two hours later.
On Saturday, the grandmother would take one child to violin and dance in the morning and my friend would take the other to gymnastics and piano in the afternoon. With her mother sidelined, my friend now faces a Saturday of activities that begin at 7 am and lasts until 5 pm, and both children must attend the other’s activities. And of course they’ve lost that time with their grandmother.
Suddenly, my friend can see that her family is overscheduled. The kids don’t want to give up any of their beloved activities, but the mom works every day from 8 to 4, and brings work home, and tries to keep up to gymnastics and dance, violin and piano, orchestra and basketball and baseball. And feed the family and help with homework and do the laundry and … well, everyone is in the same boat, aren’t we? Too much to do, and too little time.
This week was that kind of week. An ear infection, a skin infection, everybody with colds. Report cards home, parent interviews at school, a PA Day, two projects at work, and a visit from a friend from overseas. A car seat crisis that required a trip to a big box store and an unplanned outlay of cash, a lost prescription for the Flu Mist instead of the flu shot, and the death of a laptop. A parking ticket, garbage day, show and tell, special helper, a preschool project on families, two swimming lessons, two skating lessons, and two ballet lessons, the last mercifully at the same time in the same place. And, of course, that 9 to 5 job that requires my presence and focus from Monday to Friday, almost an afterthought, along with an unreliable commute that eats up another hour a day.
This is when my decision, six years ago, to become a Single Mother by Choice seems a little foolhardy. Surely this would be doable with a spouse to do half of it, or at least to sleep on the couch while I do the grocery run after the kids are in bed? But God knows I can’t complain or someone will remind me I got myself into this all on my own.
Except no one ever does remind me of that, really. My week has been full of understanding and empathy. My overseas friend and I talked over dinner at my dining table, while the kids played around us, and she talked about the difficulties of traveling for work and leaving her nursing baby and kindergartener behind with her husband, who juggles his own job demands. She’s impossibly grateful to have both children and a good job to juggle, having lost a twin pregnancy and endured many IVFs to create her family in her 40s. And everyone I come across is just as human these days.
My boss left work early after daycare called when his youngest cut her hand, and my daughter’s teacher switched interview times without complaint or delay when I needed it. At daycare dropoff on Pajama Day today, the teacher – a working mother herself – pulled out her own daughter’s pajamas, tags still on them, when my child found herself without. Everyone’s in the same boat, and none of us have quite enough time to do it all, or at least all of it perfectly. And so we muddle along the best we can, with apologies and as much grace as we can muster. It was a busy day, but you can bet I found the time to email the teacher’s supervisor, to relate her kindness and quick-thinking. We’re nothing if we’re not in this together.
My friend, having failed to convince her children to give up an activity now that their grandmother is ill, is going to try again. She knows it is her decision, not theirs, to make – her responsibility, even. We can’t do it all, and we especially can’t do it all without help. So we make hard decisions, and miss out on some things, and fall short on too many fronts to count. I remind myself that only the really important things matter. I have to keep my job, and I have to raise my children. That means food on the table, clean clothes, a warm house, and bedtime books every night. The rest will come, possibly a little later than usual, and without the perfection I’d like.
But when I got home from daycare pickup tonight and unloaded the car, I noticed my neighbour paying the pizza delivery guy as her two kids pranced beside her on the front step, and I felt that much better as I got our own pizza out of the freezer. Perfection is over-rated.