Love to the Single Mamas

So the other night I got together with some of my twin mommy friends.  If we were hip, like the folks on Twitter, we would call each other our Tweeps (twin peeps).  But we're not that cool, so we just call each other by our regular names.

The event was hosted by my good friend Meredith.  You may remember her super-irritating ex-husband Jim from my post "Happy Father's Day! No, not you, Deadbeat, I'm talking to the good ones." Her real name isn't Meredith. I just call her that because it's entirely possible and justifiable that she will snap and stab her ex-husband in the eyeball with a fork, and Meredith Baxter Birney will portray her in a Lifetime movie entitled Forks: They're Not Just for Pancakes Anymore. 

If you get a bunch of us moms together, and especially if you throw some vodka and Fresca into the mix, we will get around to Jim-bashing pretty quickly.  One of his more minor annoying acts: five minutes before picking up the kids, Jim called from his cell to ask Meredith to get a box of nails from the basement to give him.  A half-empty box of nails, that he thought might be in the third drawer down, you know the one that sticks, but maybe it's not there, and could she look around for it, it might be on the top shelf behind the Christmas decorations.  Also, he's kind of in a rush, so could she go look right now.

Because that's what single moms have time for: digging around in basement drawers looking for a half-full 59-cent box of nails.  It's to Meredith's credit that she didn't find the nails, load a nail gun, and run them through his snazzy new Ed Hardy shirt when he arrived.  You know why she didn't?  Because she's a good mommy.  (She did, however, give him a blank stare when he arrived asking for the nails, and oh yeah, the kids.)

More annoying that the Great Nail Hunt of 2010 was the time that Jim gave a detailed account of the totally rad concert he and his girlfriend Courtney attended while Meredith was home taking care of their children.  Last concert Meredith attended?  Sing-along at library story time.  Shut up, Jim.

With Jim, there's minor annoyances and major annoyances, and then there's the things that make me want to slam him with an old-fashioned cast iron pan.  Jim's the kind of upstanding 45-year-old that interrupts his kids to read text messages from his girlfriend.  "Excuse me son, I'd love to hear about your t-ball game, but I have to check for booty calls now."

I can't pretend to know what it's like to be Meredith.  When we were selling our house in Pennsylvania, the Absent-Minded Professor was already in working in Texas.  We were apart for a little over a month.  It's not the same; I knew it was temporary.  Nevertheless, it was eye-opening.  What I learned is that it's not the being in charge 24/7 that wears a mom down.  It's not the fact that no one else is going to take out the trash, even when there's freezing rain coming down.  It wasn't killing all the spiders myself, it wasn't pretending to be happy so that the kids would keep it together, it wasn't doing all that plus keeping the house in showroom-condition because we were trying to sell it. That stuff?  You just do what needs to be done.  That's what moms do.  For me, the biggest drag was just being lonely.  Despite being with my amazing kids and having a support network of wonderful friends, at the end of the day, I was lonely.  Watching television and making sarcastic comments to myself is just not as fun.

My guess is that single moms get a little sick of hearing, "I don't know how you do it!" from married moms.  I heard it a lot back in our mega-allergy days when I had to cook five different dinners because everyone had different food requirements.  I would just shrug.  It's not like I had a choice; my kids obviously had to eat dinner.  What else could I do?  I hate to cook, but I made the damn dinners.  So here's what I'll say to my single mama friends: I respect what you do.  I know it's hard in ways that I don't even know.

At some point in the evening, someone spilled a Frodka on Meredith's copy of The Single Mother's Handbook.  We all feel really bad that it has to go back to the library reeking of vodka, but on the other hand, we feel that the next single mom who checks it out will understand. 

p.s. All the Single Ladies: If you haven't already, check out SingleMommyhood and Single Mom Seeking.  They. Are. Awesome.