I just registered my youngest for kindergarten, and I’m almost positive that means life is getting easier. If nothing else, I’m counting on lower daycare costs, but people insist I’ll soon be spending that money on ukelele lessons, lunchboxes and gym clothes. We’ll have to see.
Having both my girls in full-time, full-day elementary school come September means I’m no longer in charge of the educational aspect of their lives. I’ve turned that all over to the school. Now, when they ask questions, I can refer them back to their teachers. I can also stop feeling guilty about not doing educational things with them, like “Sight Words Bingo” and “Zingo Math,” which we really only got around to once and afterwards just felt guilty about the neglected box sitting on our games shelf.
Now the guilt can rest; someone else can teach my girls math. My job can be reduced to food preparation, laundry, and refereeing fights over whose turn it is to choose the DVD. I have to say, I’m ready for a reduced role around here. Elementary school, I give you my children.
Their school is huge, so I didn’t know the secretary who helped me register Anna. She was chipper, and when I commented on that, she said it was still early – by 3 pm she’d barely be speaking. I’d filled out a few forms and she started doing the data entry on the computer as I filled out more forms. I’d left the “other parent/guardian” side of the form blank, and checked the “single” box on my side of the form, but she leaned over anyway, sotto voice, to ask “IS there a father?” I understand they like to know these things for custody and legal reasons, so I didn’t mind the question.
“No. I used an anonymous sperm donor. Is there a box for anonymous sperm donor?” I asked, less sotto voice than she. She laughed and said no. I told her there would be soon, it was the way of the future. She laughed and even pounded on the desk a bit in appreciation. And then she confided that she thought I was onto something, that husbands weren’t all they were cracked up to me. I don’t know if she was married and telling me something about her own life, or just refering to her experience as a secretary in a large elementary school who has a lot of contact with parents. In any case, I agreed that I had a good deal going on.
“Good for you,” she concluded, and then broke from her data entry for a few minutes to help the gym teacher deal with two kindergarten boys who’d gotten into an altercation that caused the bigger of the two to have a split lip. She quickly determined a third boy was involved, and the gym teacher, an obvious rookie, went to find the third boy. The first two boys waited outside the principal’s office, sharing a chair. Adorable.
Good for you. It is the near universal reaction when I tell people I’m a Single Mother by Choice. When it comes up in the media, the online comments section fills up with vitriol, but in person, people are always thrilled for me. They confide that they wish they’d thought of that. They complain about husbands. They tell me about someone else they know who has used a sperm donor. They talk about divorce and custody arrangements. They all seem happy for me.
I’m happy too. It seemed like a pretty big deal 10 years ago as I started down this track. It seemed a little weird. A little lonely. I little presumptuous. But now, the toddler years behind me, the fertility treatments a distant memory, registering my youngest child for kindergarten, I have to admit it’s been great, not as hard as I’d feared, and better than anything I could have hoped for.
Many women forged this path before me, and so made it easier for me to get here, late to motherhood and alone. I’m ready to follow them to the next step. Bring on the ukelele lessons and the lunchboxes. I’m ready for the next stage of motherhood.