Solo Mother

Single mother choices, guilt and belonging

by christina on December 14th, 2006

I can’t do right by my son. If I could do right by my son, I’d be a stay at home mom, or work part time, and pick him up after school every day. We’d play Candyland and fingerpaint, bake cookies together and read as many stories as we want to. He’d have his mama there for him whenever he needed him. I’d be able to take care of him when he got sick, chaperone the school field trips, and volunteer in his classroom.

Instead, I’m crying as I type this because I just can’t. I don’t have enough support, I don’t make enough money even when I do find work, and I can’t seem to find enough of an entrepreneurial spirit to work from home and make ends meet. I leave my kid in the school’s aftercare program until 6M — he’s often one of the last children to be picked up. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I have a temp assignment and a sick kid at the same time: make money and let my kid down or take care of the kid and not be able to buy groceries?

I can’t afford private school for the kid, or a nanny or private aftercare. My kid goes to DCPS, and his teacher is an absolute marvel. The King of Everything is blossoming into a benevolent ruler, and I fully credit Ms. D for the work she has done with him, and the warm hearts of the other three year olds in his class. He doesn’t know yet that being a different color skin than the majority of those around him can get him hurt, ridiculed, or worse, yet. He doesn’t know about race riots or bigotry or discrimination. All he know is, Adiya’s face lights up when she sees him, and Percy is a good buddy, and Ms. D loves him.

I’m walking a stressful, slippery slope at the school, as one of a handful of white parents. The culture of the school is black. The faculty and student body is black. I’d say overwhelmingly so, but that would put an emotional edge, an implication, that I don’t mean. It’s wonderfully, predominantly black. It’s a world for which I have very little experience. Even though I’m a native Washingtonian, I’ve always been in that illusory white majority, living in the white part of town and going to white, private schools. The people of colors — and let’s face it, we’re all colored, my skin is darker than my friend Amanda’s! — different than my own have been people I’ve known within that common, cultural framework. I’ve never dated outside my own culture. I’ve never roomed with someone of a different culture. And until we lived in Dubai, I’d never immersed myself in another culture besides French.

Somewhere along the way, I learned to judge people by the kindness of their faces, not the color of their skin. I’m not colorblind. I’m in love with deep dark African skin the color of warm, chocolate cake. Dubai was a kaleidoscope of every shade of humanity, including several lobster red tourists from Dublin. But I’m learning the hard way that I am often perceived as white, first, and parent second. And unfortunately, I do a very good job of hiding the single, unemployed, very alone parent side of me, so only one or two members of my child’s school know the kind of stress I’m under, or realize the uptown poverty chic lifestyle we live.

So now, thanks to PMS, joblessness, mother lion and being my son’s only advocate, I’ve been labeled the crazy white bitch at my son’s school. I’m going to have to sit down and talk to everyone and get them to work with me, to see me for who I am, not what color I present. It hurts to not be given the benefit of the doubt; I’m getting my first lesson in what it is like to be the minority. So long as I take the hurts, and spare my son these humiliations and frustrations as long as I can. Until he knows how to judge a person by what’s on the inside, what shines through, and blinds us all to the surface.

Either I stick it out and fight to be heard as a mother, not a crazy white bitch, or I do what so many other white families have done and put my kid in a white environment, where I don’t always have to be looking over my shoulder, double and triple checking everything I do or say for fear of tripping some ‘race’ trigger. I’m hopelessly naive and optimistic when it comes to these things, assuming that everyone sees the world the way I do, and doesn’t jump to conclusions just because she’s black, he’s white, those two over there are Asian.

Maybe being a single mother is hellish, at times, but its also an opportunity to grow.

So, the next time you see me overreacting to something, look at it from my point of view: I can’t be there for my son the way I want to, and other people, people I don’t know but must trust simply because they tell me to, are in charge of him for almost all of his waking hours. I’m dealing with the crushing guilt of that, as well as the anger, helplessness, and frustration of my situation. If I come on like gangbusters, I’m sorry. Mama lion bares her claws first and asks questions later, sometimes. I’ll try to keep that hypervigilant part of me to myself. Know I am a parent first, often at the expense of the other things I used to be: lover, artist, cook, confidante, friend. Crazy white bitch is mixed in there, too, but only if you insist on labelling me that way.

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