“Are we still in Ohio?” Benjamin calls from the back seat.

“Yes, we’re still in Ohio but we’re not in Columbus anymore. We’re almost to Athens. Your Daddy will be there, at the gas station in just a few minutes.”

During our bi-weekly hand-offs I try to mask any emotion other than, of course, pure Mommy delight. I never want Benjamin to feel any guilt for loving his father as much as his mother, for wanting each of us just as badly. We’re meeting at a gas station because even though Benjamin can tell me exactly how to get to his father’s house, deep in the back hills of Athens County, I know I’d get lost on the way back out.

Benjamin sees his Dad before I do and starts howling from the back seat, “Daddy! Daddy!” Their bond is solid now, far beyond anything I could ever control.

I am driving Benjamin down because his father can’t drive up to pick him up anymore, for reasons I can’t get into here – but keeping them apart is no longer an option. So, I bite my lip. I smile, exchange a few nicities. I hand over his bags. I hug my son so tight he screams at me to “let go”. After I do I stand up, walk to my car and drive away. That five minutes feels like fifteen and the only thing that makes it all right is seeing Benjamin’s smiling face from the back seat of his father’s car, with a wave and then a few kisses he blows my way.

I have an absolutely astonishing, bright and happy boy and his father is a part of that equation. It’s taken us a while to get here, but now I can’t imagine a world for Benjamin without his father there.

—–

A few hours later John Bear and I are sipping margaritas on the patio of our favorite Mexican place. He always manages to talk me into a dinner out, even though we should be saving every cent. The little luxuries though, these are what we work for, he says. And it works. Like a charm. We compliment each other in this way. I bring him far enough into my frugal zone and he pulls me out of it just enough.

This tug and pull translates into just about every aspect of our lives. I’m hotheaded, he’s cool. He tires easily, I can never relax. We always end up somewhere in the middle.

“I miss Benjamin already,” I say. He’ll be at his Dad’s for another week this time because school is out again.

“I understand,” he says.

“No you don’t! You love it when he’s gone,” I tease.

“Alright fine, maybe I do enjoy it a little.” Admissions come easily from John. Another thing I love about him – his honesty, almost as raw as mine but not nearly as abrasive. I raise my eyebrow at this and say, “I knew it!”

“Well, come on. It’s not like we get much alone time.”

“True, this is true.”

A few minutes later a couple led by a screaming toddler walks past our patio table. Twenty minutes earlier they had walked in, bright and happy – ready to bravely attempt a family date night, in a crowded restaurant.

John shakes his head in sympathy as the father picks up the boy who is now screaming even louder.

“I used to look at that before differently, now I’m just like ‘Been there, done that.’”

And then, without hesitation, John Bear uttered a phrase I used to tell him, “People without kids just don’t get it.”

I lower my eyes and start sipping my margarita, trying to hide the astonishment on my face. The way he said that, so casually. These are the little things that still manage take me aback. Because they amount to one big, giant, colossal thing – John has completely embraced Benjamin and I, tantrums and all. We are becoming a blended family.

—–

A few minutes after we finish our margaritas we get a phone call that the Cement Marketing offices were on fire. No serious damage. Unless, of course, you’re this door.

Or this window

And now, I know exactly what John Bear will be like when driving me to the hospital when/if I’m ever in labor again.

Me: “Don’t go so fast. You’re going to kill someone.”

John: “I’m trying to get us there as fast as I can and I’m not going to kill anyone.”

Me: “Watch out for that old lady. That poor old lady. She wasn’t doing anything wrong!”

John: “You need to calm down.”

Me: “Do you want a piece of gum?”

John: “No! I do not want a piece of gum.”

Me: “Geez. What’s wrong?”

John: “Nothing. Nothing. I’m just trying to drive. What? Are you laughing? Seriously? Dude, this is serious.”

Me: “I know, but you’re so funny right now. Look at you, you’re driving like a maniac.”

We got there a few minutes later and waited for about twenty minutes before getting confirmation that our front office room, the room with all of our equipment – and, most importantly, my external hard drive with Benjamin’s baby pictures were unscathed. The fire started out on the roof and creeped into the entryway and our entry window, but aside from that no serious damage inside of our office.

Related posts:

1. The Rabbit Hole
2. Single moms are on fire.
3. O’ Daddy, Where Art Thou?

I met the first boy who would break my heart at a party.

My legs were crossed and I had a pillow on my lap, my back leaning into the corner of the sofa. Working three jobs over my summer break between my freshman and sophomore years of college I liked this spot in the corner,  far enough removed from the party that I wasn’t expected to chime in but close enough to hear the conversations and the laughter. I wanted to hide my exhaustion and my fat thighs. A hot summer day in Athens, the windows of my friend’s house were open and the light breeze was pulling her curtains and then pushing them back ever so softly.

My father would be dead one year from now. Ignorance, I realized later, truly was bliss but I couldn’t appreciate this yet. I did know he had seemed tired lately, more tired than usual and that he’d been complaining of headaches. I wasn’t thinking about this though, I was thinking about the boy who had just walked in and taken a seat on the couch across from my corner. “This is Mike,” said the hostess.

We exchanged our hellos and then started talking about majors, our apartments for next year, our hopes, our dreams. We were clicking. A few weeks later I took him home to meet my family. We even told each other we were “in love.” I thought we would be together well into the fall quarter, if not for the entire year. But after he’d been giving me a perturbing cold shoulder for days I walked into his apartment unannounced and demanded an answer. “Why?” I asked, “Why have you been so mean lately? What is going on? Do you not want to be with me anymore?”

“No,” he said, “No, I don’t.”

We had only been going out for a month and a half but I felt like my heart had just been ripped out, stomped on and then shoved back into my chest cavity. After the words left his mouth I turned around and walked out of his apartment quietly, refusing to give him any more pieces of my heart. I spent the next two days in my dorm room, crying my eyes out and wondering why. Without e-mail and cell phones it was easier to not obsessively stalk someone, instead I was just left alone with my thoughts and my tears. And in one of these moments I heard a knock on my door.

“Who is it?” I snapped.

“It’s your Dad.”

I opened the door and there he was, tall and dutiful. His hands were holding a small bouquet of flowers he had picked from the garden at the house. I would save these flowers for years until one year they came crashing down onto the floor, breaking into dozens of pieces. Until then I had tried to smell them, wishing to feel – if even for a second – like he was still there in that room with me.

“Your Mom called me,” he said, “She told me to come by. So you got dumped, huh?”

“Yes,” my voice broke and I started sobbing and sat on the top of my desk, burying my face in my hands, trying to hide these embarrassing tears.

He pulled up my desk chair, took a seat and crossed one leg over the other. He didn’t like seeing me this way so he let out a sigh and then said, “Listen, Alaina. There’s something you should know about yourself and about men. Not very many of them will be able to handle you. You’re just like my mother.”

His mother, my grandmother, had died when he was 18, also from cancer. A single mother, she had raised my father and his three brothers with the help of their grandmother, who was a single widowed mother.

“You’re like she was,” he went on, “You’re passionate, intelligent and beautiful. But because of that most of these guys, especially these college guys just won’t understand you.”

“You think so? Really?”

“Absolutely.” He gave me a hug and then left but his words stayed with me forever.

Now I’m sharing them with you because he wasn’t just talking about me. Since then I have met other women like me… Mia is just one them. So strong, passionate and beautiful. You are a lot to handle but if he can’t appreciate who you are than, trust me, you’re better off without him. Don’t stop until you find a man who isn’t intimidated by your passion, but fosters it and a man who isn’t threatened by your intelligence but attracted to it.

In the meantime, the only thing we can do is pick up the slack and become one with ourselves because that guy – if he does come along – will like you just the way you are supposed to be… happy, content and comfortable in your own skin.

—–

P.S. I think my father would have adored John Bear.

Related posts:

1. Joining the club.
2. What’s a single working mama to do?
3. Single Mom S.O.S.: Her ex wants full custody!

The radio booth smelled like old men and dusty records but I liked it anyway.

When Glenn Miller came on I would start dancing by myself. Dinner in the diner, nothing could be finer. How can you not dance to Chattanooga Choo Choo?

My Dad had introduced me to The Glenn Miller Band years earlier.

We were cleaning the living room when he popped in his Glenn Miller CD and then told me to drop the broom and “dance with me!” Dancing with him for those few songs, him leading me, trying to teach his high-strung teenage daughter to loosen up is one of those memories I will always keep, the kind no one can take away.

He was always making those kinds of memories for me – teaching me how to live life, to have fun, to enjoy the little things.

Dancing alone in the radio booth also kept me awake.

I was working the 4:00 AM Saturday morning shift, it was my first radio job and a chance to hopefully land a shift in the daylight hours. But for now I was stuck in the darkness – alone and nervous. Whenever I’d turn the microphone on I’d get chills, up my arms, down my neck and sometimes in my throat. The nerves were so intense I would occasionally bumble my words or, even worse,  freeze up entirely.

Between newscasts and nerve sessions I would imagine who had sat in the seat before me, another girl perhaps or maybe a young man who was now old.

They had all warmed the same black bar stool chair with the awkward swiveling motion, they had all pressed their lips up to the microphone and they had all seen that light flick to red -”On Air” – before letting the words fly from their mouth.

If they could do it. I can do it.

I said the same thing when I learned how to drive and then when I learned how to drive a stick four years later.

I had bought the car for myself with a loan co-signed by my father. He had been diagnosed with cancer five months earlier and would be gone in one month.

“I can’t figure it out,” I told him on day, on the brink of tears.

I was so impatient, so headstrong and so determined to learn the stick shift but I kept stalling. My father was standing with me in the kitchen, resting his arm onto the counter for support. He was so light now, so skinny. He had aged 30 years it seemed in just weeks.

“Let’s go,” he said, “I’ll teach you.”

“But Dad, what if…” I didn’t want to say it out loud, so I thought it – what if you puke. He had been so sick. That’s the thing about cancer – it just gets worse as it eats you alive and in my dad’s case it was eating just about ever organ he had.

“Just go, c’mon,” his voice was stern.

So we went.

Out to the car.

He squeezed his long legs, the legs of a man who towered above most, into the back seat of my two-door Nissan Sentra.

“I don’t want you to remember me this way,” he told me between lurches.

“I won’t, Dad, I promise.”

The car jolted forward, or was it backward? Over and over.

I just couldn’t keep the damn clutch from going out. Dad was trying his best to explain, to smile but in the end we had to lurch back home so he could get out of that seat and into the bathroom.

I wouldn’t learn stick that day. It would come to me weeks later but my Dad wasn’t there. By that point he was bound to a wheel chair, unable to leave the house and definitely unable to ride in my back seat.

When you know someone is going to die, when you know they won’t be around for much longer you try to think of things to say, things you may hear in a movie or something but the words don’t come as easily as you think.

“I had a good life,” he would say, “I did. I had a beautiful wife, six beautiful children and I loved my job. At least I had everything I ever wanted.”

But he was pissed.

You could see it in his eyes. He was a physician himself and he knew his cancer was the worst kind of cancer. He knew there was no hope, he knew he was going to die and he was pissed that he had to leave us.

That he couldn’t see his children grow up or live out his life with his wife.

He wanted to stay.

When I would hear him telling my mother that the chemo would be a “waste of time” I would try to say things I thought would motivate him to will himself better.

“Dad, please, don’t you want to see me get married some day? Don’t you want to walk me down the aisle?”

I forgive myself now for saying that only because I was a kid, but it still haunts me.

Of course he wanted that, he wanted that more than anything. Words can’t turn some things around. Some things – like adenocarcinoma and three brain tumors – are unstoppable.

—-

I flicked on the microphone for the 6:00 a.m. Saturday morning newscast. But this time was different. There would be no errant chills in my throat because when I looked up, he was there.

My father had taken a detour on the way home from his overnight shift at the Emergency Room to watch me give a live newscast. He had volunteered to come, wanting to see his “little girl on the radio.”

I glanced up between stories and I could see his face through the small tiny glass window of the thick padded door – he was smiling, from ear to ear.

Kind of like he is in this picture.

—-

“Did you make someone smile today, Alaina?”

He asked me this often during my childhood.

“I think so,” I’d say.

“Did you know that when you make someone smile, just once, they’ll be a little bit happier and then they’ll make someone else smile. So for every person you make smile you could make dozens or even hundreds of other people smile.”

I think that was his secret, smiling and making other people smile.

—–
When that awesome story appeared in the Columbus Dispatch this Sunday a lot of you read it, including an old college friend who promptly sent me some photos he’d stumbled upon recently, “profile photos of a great Doctor, and a great man,” he wrote in the e-mail, “one who saved my life a few years earlier when I had a severe allergic reaction to penicillin. I wanted you to have them, as well as the knowledge of how much he garnered my respect and adoration.”

It would have been my father’s 61st birthday this week.

And today, he would want each and every one of you to make someone else smile.

Related posts:

1. Happy Father’s Day, Daddy (!)
2. Cancer SUCKS.
3. His eyes, the Governor & Dave.

Maybe I gave up.

Maybe I just didn’t want to hear another “I can’t” or “I’ll try” – each one cutting a bit deeper than the last.

But somewhere along the way I just stopped.

I stopped asking my ex-husband to spend more time – time outside of his 36 hours a week – with our son.

So I’m not sure why, when Benjamin refused to let go of his father this afternoon, I said, “he needs you now, more than ever  – maybe you should spend more time with him.”

And then, the reply came that I’ve been wanting to hear for three years, “Yeah, maybe I should keep him two nights a week. I’m working the night shift now on Thursday so I could keep him Wednesday night and bring him to day care on Thursday morning.”

“But if you do that,” I said, “if you commit to spending more time with him you have to be around. You can’t be moving, to Chicago or anywhere.”

“You say that,” he said, “But I think you’ll be the one who moves.”

He had a point.

We’re both transient spirits and even though I have no intention of moving right now, there’s no predicting what the future holds for either of us.

Who am I after all of these years of daydreaming for him to take Benjamin more often to deny them that time together? He may not be the most supportive ex-husband financially or emotionally but he does love his son – immensely – and he’s always loved him as best as he knows how.

“I’ll think about it, okay. I’ll let you know.”

So I’m thinking about it.

Thinking about what it would be like to have an ex who steps up more often and wondering if he was really serious. I’m also, of course, hoping some of you will make sense of this for me.

Can men, as fathers, change? Could it just be a lot easier for my ex because Benjamin is a boy now, not a toddler or a baby?

For more posts on my ex and my take on our relationship as co-parents read on:

• This shit ain’t easy (a bedtime story).
• When is Daddy going to bail?
• The man in the kitchen.

Related posts:

1. His father wants to take him…I’m freaking out.
2. She’s pregnant. Should she tell the father?
3. When the long lost father resurfaces.

All of Benjamin’s life people have commented on his eyelashes.

“They’re from his father,” I say. They are amazing. Like little butterfly wings.

He also has his father’s body – his shoulders, his legs, his torso and even his little butt. But he has my smile, my eyes and my eyebrows. Like any mother, I day dream about what kind of a man Benjamin will become. But unlike most mothers, I hope against all hopes that, aside from the physical resemblance, that my son is nothing like his father.

——-

His father is the mysterious man who shows up once a week to pick him up for an overnight. We barely know each other any more. I can’t even remember what it felt like to be in love with him – I must have been delusional, I think. There’s nothing there now. Nothing at all. Just a shadow of the girl I used to be… a naive girl who would fall for a man and marry him on a whim because he needed a Green card.

Here’s the thing, when you’re a little girl and you dream of that damn prince and the castle you forget to dream about how he’ll be as a father. At least I did.

This dream surfaces, for some of us, in the form of a blinding nightmare because it’s after we’ve already had his child. And it dawns on us that we’ve bred with a rotten apple, a dud, a bad father.

But how do you tell what kind of a father a man will be until he is actually tested? How do you really know? I’m not sure if I have the answer. But I think it starts by measuring how they love you, how they treat the future mother of their children.

——-

On Christmas morning – after he opened his stocking and a massive Thomas track from Grandma…

Benjamin’s eyelash donor showed up to take him for the night.

My mother, had been mumbling her protest to the idea all morning, “He’s too sick! Tell him he’s too sick. He can’t take him on Christmas.”

“I know, Mom. I know. But he is his father. He gets to see him on Christmas.”

She shook her head, unable to comprehend having to share her child with a virtual stranger. Sharing your child, if you think about it, is not a natural experience for any mother.

Thirty minutes later Benjamin was cuddled in his father’s arms, ready to go and eagerly shouting his name.

But his father had ignored him twice now – too busy talking our ears off with another one of his stories. I had trained myself long ago to listen to these narratives without interrupting. You just have to listen and nod your head, it’s really fucked up.

And if you want something, you have to ask very, very nicely.

So I did. Because I wanted my kid with me on Christmas night.

“You know what?” I say as sweetly as possible, “Why don’t I come get him at 4:30. I don’t think he should stay at your place because we’ve been so sick.”

“Yeah. Okay,” he says, “We wanted to spend some time alone tomorrow anyway.”

We being he and his girlfriend.

It’s funny. Because after all of this time I still expect something from him, some kind of protest, some kind of sentence like, “But I haven’t seen him in a week” or “I really want to take him to this cool park I found.”

Five hours later I bust out of my sick funk to go pick up Benjamin at his father’s place – technically his girlfriend’s place. She opens the door for me. Inside it’s dark and small. I can’t imagine living here with him. Our old town house had been four times this size and, even there, I couldn’t hide from him. Here, she had no where – not a solitary inch of the place to herself.

She’s still as frail and as beat down as she was the first time we met. I can tell she’s scared of him and unlike me, unable to stand up for herself.

Benjamin hadn’t eaten or napped while he was there and he passed out in my car within seconds it seemed. Utterly exhausted. We both were. It’s draining. It really is… especially when you’re so damn sick.

We still are by the way. I don’t even know how many days it’s been now. But now, Benjamin has passed his flu on to me. So it’s a cold and flu for Mommy while he just has the remnants of the flu. I’m just hoping at this point I’ll be able to work on Monday. I would call his father but I know there’s nothing he would do… believe me, I’ve called before.

Maybe I should move to Alaska or something.

Related posts:

1. Obama Calls Out Dead Beat Dads
2. On sharing a child.
3. Guess Who?

My father loved bringing my mother breakfast in bed.

He would also clean the dishes after dinner – every single night, even when he cooked. When he’d come home from work he’d seek her out, “Where is my beautiful wife?”

“Upstairs Dad,” we’d sigh. When he found her he’d scoop her up into a sweet hug and tell her how much he loved her. All six of us, my siblings and I, would groan even more when they kissed in front of us, “stop it!! Gross! Mom and Dad are kissing!”

In the evenings, as we drifted off to sleep, we’d hear laughter pouring up the stairs or quiet voices as they talked and talked and talked. About the house, life, us, the future. The morning he died, after they’d been married for 30 years, I woke up my mother to tell her. “It happened Mom, he’s dead.” His cancer had surfaced six months earlier. Three brain tumors. It spread quickly. He’d been asleep for days when he slipped away.

“I know,” she said.

“How?”

“He was just in my dream, he said good-bye. Why am I still here? I was supposed to go with him.” Her eyes were glazed over. Part of her had left with him.

No more surprise flowers by her bedside, no more lingering hugs and no more soul mate. That fear of ever losing someone like she did had me frozen for years. But after having Benjamin, after becoming a mother, I’ve realized my father wouldn’t want me to be filled with fear on his account. My mother doesn’t either. And she by the way, nearly 10 years after his death, is in love again herself.

We have to go on. We have to keep those we’ve lost alive by living for them, by carrying on and by telling their stories.

—–

They met on a train in 1967 (I think).

He saw her and couldn’t move. His eyes met hers. She smiled and then darted them away. Then he walked up to the empty seat next to her and said,”Can I sit here?”

“No.” My mother answered shortly.

She was dead serious, so sick of men hitting on her. My father, undeterred, took the seat across from her instead. He asked her what she was reading. My mother told him it was none of his business. You get the idea. But, by the end of the train ride from Columbus to Chicago he had convinced her to give him a chance.

I’m giving Mr. Man a chance.

I still can’t find the words to write about him but I can tell you the ice is melting… slowly. And besides, my mother thinks he is amazing – he reminds her of my father. And, deep down, I’m a huge sucker for romance and of course, men who treat women like queens.

In my opinion, they’re the only ones worth having around.

[Photo: My mom and dad shortly after their wedding]

Related posts:

1. Oh, those married people…

If I were to write a personals ad here’s what it would say.

Dear Man.

I like you. I really do. I’m just trying to figure out why I need you. So if you want me (and I’m quite a catch) you’ll have to prove your worth.

In order for me to deem you valuable you must be able to:

1. Cook

2. Clean

3. Pamper

4. Love

5. Respect

6. Trust

7. Laugh

8. Intrigue

9. Provide

and…last but not least you must have…

10. A nice ass

Sincerely,

Ms. Single Mama

Related posts:

1. Online Dating Etiquette: How to break up…virtually.
2. Boyfriend + toddler + work = tired single mama