Perilous Thoughts

The Parent that Stayed

Well, I made it home from class this evening. A sick feeling came over me as I chit-chatted with a young woman as we waited for the accelerated business/info-technology class to began. The class started an hour late. Of course, with my kind of luck, it would start late when I came an hour early. That was fine though. I used the computers in the ajoining class to do some catching up on my writing and editing. Just as I was getting into it, the young woman that I will call, Tina, came in there.

She had this pretentiousness about herself (granted that's how you spell that). It was cool though. No one really shows who they are to strangers anyhow. Although, we'd worked on a project together in the prior class.

Somehow, she became real comfy with me and began to discuss her family business. She has small children that she seems to love a lot and take great pride in doing motherly things with and to them.

It wasn't until she started discussing her divorce that ill feeling came over me. She stated that she had gone thru so much with her husband and now it was time to let go before she's too old. My sickness came in there because although I knew my own marriage was over when it started, I wasted my precious time and sanity trying to repair the damages that were obviously irreversible.

Here I sat listening to someone that had more common sense than I. Someone that has a chance to live her life without the head ache and heart aches...to achieve goals and pursue thoughts and ideas to make life a bit better for her family, with or without the man.

I became even sicker as she discussed all of the motherly things that she does for her children. I was that young woman at one point. I was always on point when it came to my children and their education, domestic location, their well-being period. The reason I was so sick about it is because I know that they may never appreciate the struggle of a single woman.

My son is in college now. Just this past November, my ex-husband died, his father. My son has always had issues with authority, especially mine. I never knew that he'd take it to this extreme, especially since I raised him single-handedly, even financially. I thought he'd appreciate that. Not that I wanted him to hate or dislike his father. I just thought he'd love me more for being the one that stuck it out..never abandoning and loving him the way I did, despite all that I was faced with.

Tina continued to discuss her children. I let my heart pace settle and continued to listen. Maybe her children wont view her as the villain. Maybe she'll get her props as the parent that stayed.