Solo Mother

Sunday’s ritual

by christina on August 26th, 2007

It seems we’ve fallen into another golden time we’ll look back on when we’re older–with fondness and nostalgia, I hope. I’m a lucky single mother.

When I was a little girl, my father would take me to Doc Dalinsky’s over on Wisconsin and O Streets. It was a pharmacy, an old fashioned drugstore, where Nettie who worked behind the counter wore nurse’s whites, down to the stockings and the prim, powder blue cardigan over her shoulders and buttoned at her neck with a single button. Doc himself was a warm, larger than life man with a great affection for all things Washington. On Sundays, he’d host a schmere, a little brunch, a little get together of some of Washington’s biggest and brightest. I ate danish with Henry Kissinger and a score of political heavies back in the day. Doc would preside over the bagels and lox, dad would schmooze and laugh, and I’d be doted upon by some of the most powerful men in Washington while I read my way through Doc’s comic books in the magazine racks. Oh, Mad Magazine, how you corrupted me.

I loved those Sundays, and cried when Doc finally close the pharmacy. Sometimes, those kind people come back to me in my dreams, and I’m wearing my Sunday best, listening to things far above my head in more ways than just the height of the adults around me.

The King of Everything and I have fallen into a ritual of sorts, with a very different crowd. Sunday mornings, we clean up the house from our play all day, take no prisoners Saturdays, throw on some clothes appropriate to the weather, and meander across the diagonal avenues and through the parks and make our way to Eastern Market to Murky Coffee. He chooses his ’sweetie’ as we call them, those little sugar bombs of utter delight: sticky buns or white chocolate raspberry scones or muffins of delightful origin. He gets a juice. I get a French press coffee of some extraordinarily politically correct micro economy coffee and we take our high seats along the wall and laugh, and talk, and flirt with the people in line around us. People do a double take when they see us together. I suppose it’s because he’s so charming, and I’m so amused by him. He really is great company.

Life has been a little rocky of late, with huge, career-making deadlines looming, his first day of school bearing down on us, his father coming the day after the first day of school to visit, my having to hand the Kid off to my AMAZING WONDERFUL EXTRAORDINARY parents for three nights while I Worked. My. Ass. Off. The Kid has a rubber soul, really, but he’s been bounced a little too hard lately, and when I finally got to hold him again on Saturday morning, there was nothing I wanted to do more than just be. Just be a mom. Just be with my kid. So when he looked at me during breakfast this Sunday morning and asked, “We’re not going for sweeties today?” I was laughing with joy to realize we’d found another ritual to bring us together, no matter how long or far we might be apart.

Bear with me this week as I navigate the hardest week of my life since nearly a year ago when we left Dubai. I’ll be holding my child’s fragile heart in my hands while I pound through a work deadline with perfection and grace, and try to honor my son’s father while he visits with aplomb and cleansing breaths. Did I mention, the ex will be staying with us? I couldn’t imagine disrupting the kid’s first week at school any further by asking him to spend a week in a hotel with his dad. I’ll take him to school like always, and my mother will pick him up from school, like always, and the kid’s father will be welcome to do this, too, and take the child wherever they will after school is done for the day. So long as he’s in bed by 7:30.

I’ve been so introspective lately. But I have to say, my favorite part of this summer wasn’t even something I was often a part of.

You see, every afternoon, my mother went to camp to pick up my son. And I do believe that nearly every afternoon, my father was there, too, just to see the child for a few moments before heading back to work.

That’s love for you.

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