My therapist advised me to wear my two divorces proudly, to imagine they were Congressional medals of Honor signifying that I know how to get out of unhappy situations. But with my second divorce, I found myself yet again a single mother, this time a single mother of two boys under five with different daddies. Being a single parent has, until recently, felt like having a disfiguring disability, the kind that makes some people quickly look away while others want to come back, circle around for a closer look. Like many single parents, I’'ve struggled with guilt and felt like I failed my kids. After my first divorce, my dad wrote me and said, "“I used to think you were a good person and a great mother, but now…I don’t know.â€" My parents, celebrating their thirty-eighth wedding anniversary next month, refer to my brother as “Luke and his family.†But for me it’s “Iris and the boys.†In their eyes, in so many people'’s eyes, my two sons and I don’t constitute a family. But my boys are part of the thirty-eight percent of children in America living in single parent homes. I have been discriminated against. A realtor wouldn’t rent to me since “there wasn’t a dad in the picture.†I once overheard someone on the board of a preschool I was considering say, “"We don’t want to attract any more single moms."†And of course, there’'s been the dating thing. There was a guy who, once he learned that I had kids, never called me back.
I am writing at the park. William, eight, and Robin, five, are playing in the sand besides me with transformers. Robin just announced, “It'’s morning time.†The transformers are waking up and getting ready for school. When I left Robin’'s dad (my second divorce) Robin, who was two at the time, regressed with potty training. He started lisping, and he had nightmares. But it passed. Last week his preschool teacher showed me his most recent drawings. He had drawn himself, William, and me, and we’re smiling broadly. William’'s in the third grade; his teacher said he'’s one of the nicest kids she’s ever taught, in her words “a friend to everyone.â€
We need new words to describe single parent families. Most of the literature about single parent households discusses increased rate of teenage pregnancy in girls raised in broken homes, the higher incarceration rate and the high school drop out rate for boys in broken homes. Are my beautiful boys playing in the sand beside me broken? Because their fathers don’t live with us, they'’re jailbait? I don’'t accept these pronouncements.
My boys and I wake up around 6:30 am weekday mornings. I make cinnamon rolls or pancakes if there'’s time before school. We walk up the hill to William'’s elementary school and next to Robin’'s preschool, and then I go to class. They think it’s funny that I go to school, too. I graduate next year with a PhD in English. It hasn’t always been easy. One semester I missed almost a month of school when the boys had chicken pox. Another semester I had pneumonia, but those hard times seem to fade in the overall rhythm of our life.
We are a family. We cook out and go camping. We’ve vacationed in Florida and California. We go on family bike rides and to the movies. We celebrate holidays and birthdays. We make up some of our own holidays like "Kitty Appreciation Day.â€" We bake cookies together and read aloud. At the end of the day, I snuggle with them, and they sleep soundly and securely. We are a family.