It always seem so daunting and so simple when they're little. Kisses, cuddles, pees, poops; we navigate it all with dirty shirts and a whole lot of love.
Then you get the toddler; mischeivous, messy and miraculous. Their view of the world reminds you of the beauty of it all in an instant! The single chance as an adult to run in the rain with a valid excuse, to play in the mud. Paint pictures with fingers and brushes, hanging the greater ones on the fridge as a semi-permanent display.
Primary school, a whole level of creature arises. They have extensive stories to share, friends to talk about. The dinner table becomes a sounding bowl of excitement as they update you on the newest toys their friend brought to school or the sadness the tooth fairy forgot to visit the previous night, (OOPS!)
With a blink and you've missed it all, high school looms as well as the hormones and the drama. What boys are saying, doing, who we ship, who our friends want us to end up with! It is an ever evolving tale of twists and torment as friends vie for the same love all while trying to remain amicable.
Then single-parentdom enters your life and you're so busy with life itself, you figure to roll with whatever the world shows you. Funerals, insurances, inheritances, last requests, all filed quickly but the distraction doesn't last. The pain seeps in but your kids are suffering through it all too. What do you do? You move forward, you hug, you outsource. You occasionally cry in solitude.
Then reality shifts again. This is our reality. I am a single mother. He's not coming home, I can't talk to him about the kids problems and hope to come to some sort of agreement of how to move forward. So you ask your fellow parents who are just as clueless about this stage as you are. If they have had teenagers past this stage, they were boys. If they had girls, they were the "good daughter." Pushing the envelope was Jase's domain. I can't figure out if I'm doing any of it right, I'm assuming I'm doing it all wrong and then you get into the first major argument you've had since you, yourself, was a teenager. All of a sudden, empathy befalls you mid-yell as you understand how difficult it is to go through this transition on the fly. Each child presents a new challenge, a new way to try and think out the box and once you think you've come up with a genius idea, you turn to find you have no one to share your breakthrough with.
So you type...
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