The single mom

By Fathima Riznaz Hafi

have been blessed with many things, but I wish premonition was also on that list. There have been lots of times when I’ve fantasised about actually having that super power so that things would’ve been different. Wow, the paths I wouldn’t have taken and the morons I could’ve avoided! Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way.

So, it happened. Along with thousands of other women all around the world, I realised I had married a monster and I filed for divorce, prepared to face the consequences, which were: ending up raising a child by myself, being single all over again and being ridiculed by my relatives for my failure. The thought of what lay ahead of me was scary (mainly the raising the child alone part) but I had to do it.

What next?

There I was, a single mom, holding the most beautiful child in the world in my arms, without a clue of what was installed for us. I would experience spurts of intense joy one moment followed by spurts of intense guilt the next when thinking of the fact that this child would have to grow up without a father because his mother had made the mistake of marrying the wrong man.

I tried to be ‘Like a father – Like a mother,’ but I’m not Sri Lanka Insurance. My mother helps with the ‘Like a father’ role by taking him along when shopping, buying stuff for him and taking him to the park, but she can’t exactly roll around on the grass with him, teach him to ride a bike or teach him to play football what with her back pains and other grandma ailments. The general aim is to give him as much love and kindness as possible so that he doesn’t feel that something is missing. Somehow I sense that he does.

Craving a father

I remember when he was really small, when visitors came by, he’d totally ignore the women and go straight to the male who fit the ‘father’ profile in his eyes and he would smile only at him and either sit with him or open out his arms for the man to carry him. It broke my heart. He couldn’t talk yet as he was only a toddler but I knew what was going on. The craving never stopped.

He’s nine years old now and though he doesn’t ask anyone to carry him anymore, he still sits with any ‘make-believe-father’ who visits. It’s normally an uncle or cousin of mine. His latest one is my cousin who comes because we have satellite television and he doesn’t. So he talks to the kid for a while, as if he came to visit him, pretending to be his best friend and then gets engrossed in the show. Meanwhile, this kid is glued next to him, waiting for the guy to talk to him.

When he tries to give him updates on what’s going on in his life, like school and home, my cousin suddenly and conveniently goes deaf. This child however just keeps talking and talking because he has been keeping stories pent up to tell him when he comes. Incredibly irritated, I try to call my son to the room but he won’t budge when his pretend fathers come. Why people don’t see what this child wants from them is totally beyond my comprehension. He never asks them for toys – what he wants from them is absolutely free.

The dreaded question

In the early years he had shown his cravings through his actions, but finally the day came when he actually asked me the dreaded question: “Mummy, where’s my father?” It sent shivers down my spine. I knew this day would come so I had given it some thought beforehand; I even consulted those around me.

Some people told me to tell him his father was dead but I didn’t want to lie to him. I just felt it was wrong. Some said to tell him he was abroad but I thought that was ridiculous because he’d be waiting for him to eventually return. I didn’t want to give him false hope and prolong his pain, so I told him the truth, not the whole truth but a portion of it.

I said: “You don’t have a father, baby. Some children just don’t have fathers.” I tried to make it sound like it was a very normal thing and that it was fine. He kept quiet but I saw the hurt in his eyes. I then changed the topic.

A few days later he asked me the same question again and I gave the same answer. This time he asked, “But mummy, why?” He looked up at me with such sadness. I cursed that mongrel of a man for putting us in this situation. I had to sit there explaining things to him very carefully and ever so tactfully so that the hurt was minimal.

I told him he had a father but he had left before he was born because he wasn’t a good person. It may seem like I was speaking out of resentment towards the man, but I wasn’t. He had to know the truth just so he didn’t miss the loser or have the urge to go and see him. I would never have told him that his father was bad if he was generally a good person and if the issue was just a matter of us not getting along. In fact I would have encouraged him to keep a good relationship with his father.

The issue was much more than that and the fact that he was selfish enough to let a child suffer just so he got what he wanted was enough to categorise him as a bad person. So yes I told him the truth but leaving out the disgusting details of what an ogre his father was. That part, I might tell him when he is an adult (if the necessity arises) because right now it would be too much for a small child to handle.

Craving siblings

At a later stage, he started displaying a different kind of craving. This time it was for a brother and sister. When he was seven I was conducting tuition classes at home and he was one of the ‘students’. He would pretend that this girl in my class was his sister and when he wrote his name, he’d change his surname to match hers. When writing essays, he’d choose the topic, ‘My Sister’ and write about his non-existent sister. She could see this but couldn’t care less because she was always busy chatting with her ‘real’ sisters who were also in my class.

He slips off quietly sometimes to the window on the side of our house facing the neighbours and watches the kids next door playing with their siblings. They play cricket, football and all kinds of fun things. He just stands silently and watches from inside.

I play with him whenever I can, l tell him stories, we share jokes, I talk about funny things that happened at work, he talks about funny things that happened in school, I used to tickle him (but he always ended up wetting his pants so I had to stop), we watch cartoons together, I take him to the park, KFC, the mall, give him lots of hugs and kisses everyday but he needs to be around kids too.

Once he seemed so frustrated when he asked me, “Why is it that only I don’t have a father, brother and sister when all the other children do? I’m so bored.” I really needed to make him feel better so I told him, “Don’t worry, I will get you a new father, a good one this time, and then you will have a brother and sister.”

It was a few years ago that I told him this. I actually meant it and was hopeful at the time but nothing happened because almost every divorced man I’ve met is either in pursuit of a ‘Bollywood babe’ or can’t overcome his fear of ‘encumbrances’. Seriously folks, these men need therapy.

Now I’m just trying to lure the child away from those thoughts of having a father or siblings because it doesn’t look like any of that is going to happen. I have to find ways to distract him so that he gradually loses interest and engages in more fruitful thoughts and activities. I tried to do this before but it didn’t work, maybe because he wasn’t ready to accept it. I’m going to try again. I’m working on getting him involved in some recreational activities and I need to take him out more often.

Putting him in school

Ah yes, that ever-so-confusing experience of school-hunting. I don’t know much about the schools here because I grew up in another country. So I had to ask around. I wasn’t very successful in getting the desperately-needed guidance. I asked relatives, neighbours, acquaintances, went personally to schools to make my enquiries, just ended up confused. So I made my fair share of mistakes here as well.

I had put him in two different pre-schools before I found a reasonably decent one. The first one turned out to be hopeless, it was like the teacher didn’t even know what she was doing, the other was run by two sisters and their ‘housewife mother’ who freelanced as the teacher’s assistant every now and then. Once the gate was closed, they’d be in their own little world, busy with their housework and other personal stuff while the kids were left alone.

One time a child had hit my son and when I asked him where his teacher was when this had happened, he said she was in the backyard putting her niece’s nappies to dry. It’s not like I just enrolled him in these pre-schools without checking them out first. I did, but they all seemed perfectly fine until the child actually started studying there.

Then it was time for him to start formal school. That was an even bigger headache. Actually, it wasn’t just a headache, it was a migraine. Some of the schools that I visited were appalling. They were overcrowded, noisy, poorly ventilated, the teachers spoke bad English, there were no extracurricular activities and the syllabus made me frown. The really good schools demand killer fees. I wasn’t working yet so I had to rely on my savings – what was left of them.

I enrolled him thinking I’d be able to get a job soon but that was not as easy as I thought. By this time, the recession had hit the country, making my job search even more difficult. Meanwhile, my savings were also depleting. It got to the point where I had to sell some of my jewellery to pay his fees. Even this resource was limited because although my father had bought me so much jewellery that I could practically bathe in them, the ex was now holding most of that, so while he was having the time of his life pawning or selling them (or perhaps wearing them to look pretty), I was here struggling to keep the child in school.

Inevitably I had to take him out of that school and enrolled him in a less costly one in my neighbourhood. It may not be the school that I dreamed of for my child but it’s not too bad for the time-being and beats not having an education. I hope and pray that I can eventually put him in a good school and provide a bright future for him.

The job scene

Year after year passed, I just couldn’t get myself to go back into the workforce because I was so overwhelmed by the joy of being a first-time mother. I never expected it to be so fulfilling and to bring so much joy and peace into my life. I did some freelance work when he was very small and later, when he was six, I got a full-time job.

It was my first full-time job since he was born. Not one of my best reminiscences. He missed me terribly and I missed him even more. I cried waterfalls at work the first two days because I was so used to being at home with him. I hated the job because it wasn’t my dream job. I hated his father for this because I really wanted to be a stay-home-mom until he was old enough to not need me as much.

I wished he had a ‘proper’ father who did the school-hunting, paid the fees and handled the finances while I just focused on being a good mother. Of course I intended to go back into the workforce eventually, but not as long as he still needed me at home.

Once I started work, I started neglecting him. I missed him so much while at the office but by the time I got home I’d be so tired I didn’t even have the energy to chat with him. Having me there was equivalent to having a zombie walking around in the living room – it was the perfect resemblance.

I used to coach him in his studies when I was unemployed but now I just didn’t have the patience or the time so he’d sit by himself, watching television. It made me so guilty. His teacher said he had started behaving differently and his work was deteriorating. I decided this job wasn’t helping either one of us – I left, and his grades shot up!

Then I went back to teaching (I was teaching a few years ago, before he was born). I realised the pay would be low and career-wise I wouldn’t be happy but I’d get to spend time with my child — it was a temporary fix. I did this for two years and he was ecstatic, but the financial situation was going from bad to worse.

I decided it was time to quit and start looking for a job that was more suitable for me so that I would actually ‘like’ going out to work and at the same time improve the finances. I think I’ve finally landed that job now and I am trying my best to make it work. This doesn’t mean I’ve reached financial stability, because I’ve only just begun and it is not something that one achieves overnight, but at least now I know I’m on the right path.

Think twice

I didn’t write this story because I’m wallowing in self-pity or because I think I’m the only one with problems. There are single moms out there who are worse off than me. I wrote this story partly to let it out of my system but more importantly hoping that maybe it would get a few people to think of the damage their actions have on children — some irreversible.

In my case, I wasn’t the cause of the divorce although I was the one who filed for it. He was the cause. The victims were my son, me and my family, in that order. It was a meaningless union, so I had no choice.

My ex-colleague also ended her marriage and her ex was an even bigger monster than mine. She has three kids. When she decided to leave him after being a miserable housewife for 13 years, she enrolled in a course (sponsored by ‘his’ family, out of guilt) and is now working to put her kids through school. They hardly ever have her around anymore. She takes three buses to work, but still doesn’t earn much money because of her lack of qualifications.

I know another girl who is also divorced but lucky for her she is packed with qualifications so she is doing really well and with favourable working hours, she is raising her child beautifully. Her ex-husband, however, is not a monster. He seems to be a fairly decent person but the two of them had differences of opinion. So even though they are divorced, she is still on speaking terms with him and he also spends time with the child.

Not everyone will be that ‘fortunate’. Actually, her child may be more fortunate than my colleague’s or mine, but it’s still not the same as both parents living together with this child harmoniously under one roof. Nothing beats that!

Some marriages are just not worth saving, but some are. So if a marriage is going to end for trivial reasons, the person needs to pause a minute and think: It’s not an easy task – being a single mom and it’s not a separation that just affects us but our kids too, so unless he’s a monster like my ex or there is any other strong reason, perhaps making it work wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Point to note though, if you see danger signs before marriage, run for your life!