When I stop to think of everything that is required of me to be able to raise these kids alone, along with trying to live a somewhat normal life, I get overwhelmed. I don’t know how I’m doing it. There is very little leeway in my schedule and time has become a precious thing.

My house, as usual, is suffering. I was at lunch today with one of my editors and we were on this subject. He is also raising his kids alone and has been doing so since his wife died last year. His kids are much older than mine, in their late teens. But we still meet up now and again to swap stories and offer each other support in this daunting role of single parenthood. He mentioned how hard it was to work full time and keep the house clean. And I could relate. I suddenly felt that it was just impossible to have a clean home while raising kids on one’s own. Now that school and soccer have started, there are some days that my family won’t get home until after 9 pm. The last thing I want to do is clean after they go to bed, and find that I am only cleaning up the very items that I had just cleaned up the night before. Their backpacks are strewn across the living room floor. Their clothes they wore are left on the bedroom floor. Papers from school are scattered all over the table mixed in with the morning paper. The dishes they used are left unrinsed on the kitchen countertop. Toothpaste spit is left in the sink. Any cleaning I do is not making any progress in creating a clean home. If I try to employ the kids in cleaning, the 7 year old starts crying and carrying on about how hard it is, and inevitably both the kids will end up in a fight. And when it is done, it’s usually ends up with all belongings in the corner of each room and claims that the house is now clean. I have to clean it all up myself anyway, and it almost seems like more work to break up the fights or continuously prompt my crying son into cleaning than it is just to clean it up by myself from the very beginning. And I’m so tired by the end of the day that I just cannot get it done. I don’t even like having company over only because of the state of my house . The mess remains, is still there the next morning, and grows even bigger when we get home the next day. It’s a neverending process, and I am tempted to just take all our belongings and throw them away, creating a clean home by just having nothing.

There is also my desire to be fit and stylish once again. I was reminded of this today as I walked through the mall doing some last minute school shopping. What I wouldn’t give to be as thin as I used to be, and the desire was accelerated by the young girls flitting around in cute little pants and tops while I went around in my loose fitting shirt over cropped pants. I was reminded of this as I ran into a girl I knew whose hair was highlighted perfectly in her swept up ponytail. And I was reminded of this during the past week as my sister looked beautiful in her bikini on the beaches of San Diego. It all comes down to time, time spent on fitness and meal planning and taking the time out to get one’s hair done professionally rather than doing an amateur job of trimming and dying one’s own hair in the bathroom of a tiny condo. Time I don’t have.

There’s my desire to own my own home, be able to have time for a real relationship, go away on a whim’s notice for the weekend, go out for an after work beer with coworkers without hesitation, be selfish with my paycheck, not have so many responsibilities on my shoulders…..

But there are things I will not give up. I will not give up the excitement I feel as I watch my son score a goal during an especially grueling scrimmage. I will not give up the way it feels to laugh straight from my belly with two kids who find the very same things funny. I will not give up the pride that overcomes me when I’m told how responsible and great my daughter is by her teachers, or when I receive her STAR testing results only to find that she excelled in every single area well beyond her peers. I will not give up the goodnight kisses, the good morning hugs, the heart to hearts that only exist between a parent and their child, cuddling on the couch watching a movie, or having my son whoop me in a Tony Hawk video game, both of us laughing while we talk smack to the other. I will not give up the love I feel each time I look at them and see a little bit of me wrapped up in their individual selves, and know that I didn’t do such a bad job in raising them.

My life is full because of them. I’d love a clean house. I’d love all the perks that could have been. But I think I love being their mom more.

Email me at winecountry.singlemom@yahoo.com