Single parent

Tim was out of town last week.  When he travels, I think about how life would be different if something were to happen to Tim and I were single.

When I was very young, my father was in a serious bicycle accident, and ended up in the hospital with a severe head injury.  I only have vague memories of the event.  It was summer, and I think I was about five years old.  It happened in the evening.  Dad was expected home and didn't come.  My mother must have been frantic with worry, but I don't remember that.  I remember hearing that they had found a man unconscious after a bicycle accident, and it might be my dad.  I remember my just-older brother identifying the bicycle.

In the ensuing days, I remember being shuffled from house to house around the neighborhood as our church members took turns caring for us, so that my mom could be with my dad in the hospital.  In retrospect, those church members showed some very serious Christian charity to our family.  If I was five, then my older brother was six, and I had three younger siblings.  I may have been only four.  In any case, there were somewhere between four and six of us, very young children.  We were taken into neighbors homes and cared for.  I liked seeing other people's homes.  I didn't understand the seriousness of the situation.

My mother, however, must have been frantic with worry.  There was a very real possibility that my father wouldn't survive the accident.  There was also a possibility that he would come through it disabled, or with a completely different personality.  Head injuries can do that.  My mother would have had to care for all of us children alone.  She was well educated, with a master's degree in social work, and she had been employed for several years before deciding to have all those children at once.  But if I was five, then she hadn't been employed outside the home for over six years.  Her children were very young and needed constant care.  It would have been very difficult for her to find a job, and then put us all into daycare or hire a nanny.  Even if she had been more recently employed, a master's degree in social work didn't pay that well.  It would have been very hard for her to draw the kind of salary that could adequately support her large family.

My mom's story had a happy ending.  My father completely recovered.  She went back to caring for children full-time (essentially running her own private daycare out of our home, with just my siblings enrolled).

When Tim goes away, I reconsider my own situation.  What if something were to happen to him?

Unlike my mom, I am currently employed, and I have a great job.  And our family is tiny.  We would be ok, financially. There would be a lot of things that would be hard.  It would be incredibly hard to always be the responsible parent, 24/7.  Tim and I take turns now picking up from school, cooking dinner, cleaning dishes, folding laundry.  When Tim goes away from a week, it gets tiring taking over all these chores on my own.  But it's not a big deal when I know it's only for a short time.  However, it would be exhausting to be responsible for all these things day after day, week after week, year after year, with no end in sight.  And in spite of our egalitarian marriage, there is some division of labor.  I would have to learn again to do the tasks that Tim has taken care of for both of us for many years.  And with Jonathan's school schedule, I would have to work evenings, every evening, whereas now I can take many evenings off.  It would be exhausting.

And then I think about the single moms I have known over the years, especially those whose kids were my friends growing up, and my heart goes out to these women.  I had no idea how hard it was.  But they did a really great job.  At least, their kids turned out spectacularly.  It can be done.

That brings me so much relief.