Sunday morning. The house is clean, the child is dressed. His best artwork from the schoolyear is casually left out in the living room. The house smells like your breakfast potatoes and strong coffee, and the tea brewing for the iced tea of the day.
Yesterday, you made sure that your son bought a present.
9:30am, the dad arrives to take the boy to dim sum, accompanied by his new lover and a mutual old friend. You make small talk, see the artwork proudly shown off, the dog introduced. Half a year of what your son loves is distilled into a whirlwind tour.
And off they go. For you, today is about paying the bills, doing the laundry, preparing your son's room for the young woman who will sublet it after summer visitation starts in a few days. All year, you have been mother and father, friend and companion and martinet when called upon.
Today, Dad gets a half a year of make up, and is celebrated. Your son's grown about 4 inches since Christmas, and a good deal of other dimensions as well. You've been blessed to see that. But you will never see your kid smile at you on Father's Day.
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Comments: 3
Bless all the single moms out there today and every day.
Yet, no child care is provided. No after school. Wages are still set on the assumption of two incomes to support a family. If you are a single parent due to a spouse dying, you may be eligible as a widow(er) for social security to help raise your child, but if the other parent deserts you and won't pay child support, you're without recourse (or on "welfare" which is a terrible institution to families).
We really don't deal with single parents as a society at all...
So yet, we are swimming upstream every day! God bless every one of us, and our children!