“I’m sorry I was so short with you on Sunday,” I told Mr. Man.
My fears got the best of me last weekend and I felt like a schmuck.
“It’s okay. You’re probably stressed. I still can’t believe how much you do – you never stop… ever. I mean, it’s just too much for one person to handle and working full-time on top of it… I don’t know how you single moms do it.”
“Yeah, I don’t know how we do it either, but we just do it – I think – because we don’t have any other choice. And we adapt.”
——
It’s odd because aside from Mr. Man, no one has really seen Benjamin and I in our element morning, noon and night. His first taste of our daily grind came through telephone conversations during the first few weeks.
“I can’t talk, I’ve gotta go again.”
“Okay, call me when you get a break,” he’d say or, “Okay, call me when he’s down.” Our first real phone conversation of the day still comes after Benjamin is asleep.
It wasn’t until a viral infection stole my will to live and my body’s ability to even get out of bed that Mr. Man spent several days in a row – here – in our little apartment. He came up to relieve my mother who had been here for five days. That Saturday morning I woke up to Benjamin’s happy morning bedroom chatter and then drifted back into sleep.
I didn’t wake up again until 11:00 a.m., the longest I’ve slept in since becoming a mother. When I did Mr. Man was lying next to me, watching me sleep.
“You look beautiful when you’re sleeping, you know.”
“Where’s Benjamin?” I muster.
“Upstairs, playing with his trains. He sure loves those trains.”
I tried to move and winced in pain. My body shuddering a bit from my chills.
“God, I hate seeing you like this. What can I do? What do you need?”
“Some tea, maybe, or a bath.”
He drew the bath water, made the tea and kept Benjamin occupied until I could move back into my bed. It’s no coincidence that Mr. Man knows how to be a husband and a father, it wouldn’t be his first time.
A 35-year-old single father, Mr. Man blames his own mistakes for the disintegration of his first marriage. A refreshing alternative to the single fathers I’ve dated who are constantly bashing their ex-wives, Mr. Man speaks very highly of his, “I screwed up. I didn’t appreciate what I had until it was gone.”
“I want you to meet her,” he said one night, “and I want you to meet Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth, his six-year-old daughter, lives over three hours away from Mr. Man so their time together is limited to every other weekend.
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