I have a small family.  Two parents, an aunt, a sister-in-law, a nephew and my daughter.  That’s it.  Five adults, two children.  Over the last couple years, we’ve slowly started phasing out giving Christmas presents.  Last year, when my brother died, any remaining shreds of festive feelings we had were washed away in bitter tears.  So this year, we are officially skipping the whole thing altogether.  My mother will be working all day, and I will be working at the paper all night.  I will spend Christmas Eve in Maine with my good friends Tracy and June, at their calm and beautiful home, drinking wine and watching my toddler chase their dog.

When we were younger and still living at home, our father used to get in very bad funks during the holiday season.  A devout Catholic, he would be angry and depressed that the rest of his family did not attend church.  Eventually, we would hear the record blasting from the stereo in his study: “Where is the Christ in Christmas?”  One particularly jaunty December, he called us “heathen scum.”  Ho ho ho.

I don’t tell you these things to elicit pity or sympathy, or to lambaste my dad.  He still gets depressed every holiday season, but fortunately, he doesn’t seem to know where that record went.  The reason I tell you these things is… I agree with him.

If we’re not going to go to church and celebrate The Reason for the season, then why are we still rushing around and stressing out, spending money on gifts that have become obligatory and not heartfelt?  Why are we buying presents for everyone, when we aren’t giving any ‘presence’ to the One whose birthday we’re marking?  It doesn’t make sense to me.

I know people buy gifts for others to show their love at a loving time of the year, and they enjoy doing it.  I certainly love giving gifts in general.  But ‘round here at Christmastime, it just ends up stressing my family out, worrying about how much to spend, what to get whom, dealing with the crowds, etc.  So forget it, I said.  Let’s just get the toddlers something.

Personally, I detest shopping.  Yes, I’m a bad ‘girl.’  I don’t enjoy it at all, and avoid it like the plague.  If I do buy gifts, it’s usually from a catalog, from the convenience of my own couch, or online.  I will say that Nashua’s downtown merchants have gone a long way to removing my abhorrence of the task.  It’s so nice and personal and relaxed shopping on Main Street, it’s a much more enjoyable experience. 

But overall, I just can’t buy into… buying, for the sake of buying.  The frenzied department-store commercials are starting to really bug me.  BUY!  HURRY!  SPEND, SPEND, SPEND!  Get out there with the crazed masses and do your civic duty to boost the economy!  And get that parking spot before that minivan does!!!

Ack.

I have one present under my tree: a small babydoll for my sweet little babydoll.  My daughter and I will go to Maine, have a delicious gourmet dinner cooked by Tracy, and hang our stockings by the chimney with care.  We’ll enjoy the silence of the blanket of snow on the rural landscape, and snuggle up in our cozy bed together. 

As single mothers, my friends and I have to deal with a certain elephant in the living room (this is where I would usually insert a joke about my weight, but I’ll give myself a break today). Whether asked aloud, whispered behind our backs, or silently wondered about, the question is always there in other folks’ minds:

“Who’s the father of her kid?”

Taken as a group, my circle encompasses most of the possible reasons a woman finds herself as a single mom.  One of us is a divorcée; one, a widow.  One is a woman who stopped waiting for Mr. Right and decided to go it alone, via a donor she chose at a sperm bank.  One is a woman (who stopped waiting for Mrs. Right) who chose her best friend to be her donor.  And one of us is just a good ol’ fashioned “oops” brand single mother.

And I’m not telling you who is who.

Because that’s the point.  With all due respect to those people who are dying to know, it’s really no one’s business but ours.  Whether we actively chose our situations or fate thrust them upon us, it is our private matter, and one we can choose to share with you, or not.  But it has to be up to us.

I understand that the majority of mothers in our society are, in fact, with partners.  So yes, it is natural to assume some things when you meet a woman with a child.  But when I was pregnant (and oh-so-hormonally cranky), nothing sent me into a tizzy faster than going to my weekly check-ups in the same office, with the same chart (albeit different doctors) that held the same personal information, and having the doc-du-jour placidly skim my information and say “so, will your husband be joining us today?”  I finally made them put “SINGLE PARENT” in big block letters on the front of my chart.  And still I was asked.

The same goes for house-hunting.  On every walkthrough I went to, the real estate agent would ask “will your husband be wanting to see the property as well?”  One time, after I said “no, there is no husband,” the agent paused and said “soooo… it’s just you that would be making this decision?”  I smiled tightly and said, “Yup.  But I think I just made it.”

Well-meaning strangers in supermarkets get a lot more slack.  But sometimes it’s still hard.  “Oh,” cooed one woman, “I bet she’s Daddy’s little girl, isn’t she?”  “Well, it’s just Mommy and Nana, really.”  “But she’s mostly Daddy’s little girl, isn’t she?”  At this point, you just have to smile and push your cart down the next aisle before you throw a can of stewed tomatoes at someone.

It’s not to say that all single mothers are reticent to tell you their stories.  But speaking personally, if I feel backed into a corner by a blunt question, I do get riled.  I think I expected society to judge me harshly, so when the issue comes up, I automatically go on the defensive.  But it’s not to say I won’t tell you – on my own timetable. 

Certainly, if you’re dating a single mom, I think you have the right to know, if you’re planning on pursuing a serious relationship with her, whether or not some other person is going to factor into the equation.  But if it’s not an issue for her, hopefully her date will see it’s not an issue for him/her, either.

Until we single moms decide to say “hey, by the way, about that thing we haven’t talked about…”, please: just walk around the elephant.  And watch where you step.

As you mommies (and, I suppose, you daddies; but hey, it’s the ‘Mother of all Blogs’) can attest, no matter how joyous and fulfilling the time spent with our children is, there comes a point when you want to go all “Thelma & Louise” and jump in your convertible with your best gal-pal, in search of a young, undiscovered Brad Pitt.

I have those days.  And it’s been hard, being a single parent, to carve out any time for myself that doesn’t impinge on someone else’s free time.  I am at the mercy of my few babysitters and their overworked schedules, if I want to leave the house sans baby.  When I do get out, always in the back of my mind, stressing me out, is the time constraint, the deadline, the – I wince to call a spade a spade – curfew.  I have to ask permission to ‘stay out late,’ at something as innocuous as game night at a friend’s house. I  can’t afford to tick off my sitters, who happen to be my mother and aunt.  They have jobs and commitments, too, and I can’t work them into the ground so I can see more than one movie a year.

Um… can I?  No, I know, Mom.

Irrespective of my babysitting requirements, I don’t actually have a lot of things to go to.  As infrequently as we are able to go out, my dear friend Glen is pretty much my socializing catalyst.  We attend musical theater, we’re in a book club, we have game nights, we go to the movies… If he wasn’t gay, I’d be all set.  But alas.

I do have several mommy friends, but it’s difficult to get together with them, for the same reasons I have.  On this coast, for elementary school age and below, I have one single-mom friend, two friends with three children, and one friend with five (as of this writing – they’re going for number six by Christmas.  Good luck, you-know-who!).  I have three friends that are an hour or more away.  And let’s not forget that I work Friday nights.  Needless to say, there’s not a lot of spontaneous “hey, let’s go out tonight!” phone calls in my life these days.

Historically, my major source for friendship (and dating, but that’s another blog post) has been my officemates.  Working at a newspaper with a midnight deadline, though, doesn’t afford us the opportunity to go out as a group that often.  Well, some of them do – but part-time single mommy’s at home way before they hit the town.

So what’s a gal to do?  Fellow mothers are too busy.  What about non-mothers?  Well, that comes with its own eggshells to tread upon.  The mom doesn’t want to bore the non-mom with constant mom-talk, and the non-mom (hopefully) doesn’t want to impose her unsolicited advice and inexperienced two cents’ worth, at the risk of alienating the mom.  But at least non-moms are usually more available.

What it all boils down to is this: We all need time away from our responsibilities and daily stress, time to be with friends – time to be ourselves, apart from being a parent.  So… who wants to have a playdate with me?

Next time: Who’s Your Daddy?