Four years ago a solar eclipse over the U.S. dominated the news. Debates sprang up about the UV dark glasses being sold, and whether people could just use their own sunglasses. It would happen in the middle of the day, near the end of August, when most children were still not in school and could watch the event with their caregivers.
I didn’t see it. Bob and I were in a lawyer’s office, signing mountains of paperwork to buy our first house. The thing we’d dreamed about for five years was becoming a reality. Three week old Paige slept in her infant car seat, and we all hoped she’d stay that way, since it was faster when I wasn’t jostling and nursing an infant. I had just started to nurse her in public areas, my PTSD from nursing Charlotte slipping away as Paige grew and nursed easy. But if I didn’t have to cover myself in a lawyer’s office I was okay with that too.
The windows to my left seemed to darken, and I remembered the solar eclipse.
“Is that an omen?” I joked with the table- Bob, the lawyer, and his aide. We all laughed. A good omen or a bad omen? Who knew? Bob and I signed another form, my signature sloppy and rushed while his was more precise.
A month later, we moved into our house with newborn and toddler in tow. The process already didn’t go as we’d originally planned but we were here. The previous month of bidding stress, mortgage negotiations, my bout with shingles, and day by day packing mixed with cesarean recovery was a thing of the past. We were finally here, and out of the city.
Four years later here we are, and how much has changed. Bob was diagnosed before we’d lived here a year, and gone before we’d been here two. Thank God I’m not still in the city, I thought when he died, though I had no idea how I’d manage this house on my own. It felt so large, despite the giant safe toys that come with infants and toddlers.
Did we need all this space? It’s amazing how much space one person takes up, and just in a physical sense. Even a sparse bachelor like Bob, whose primary acquisitions were plaid shirts. (Seriously, so many plaid shirts.) The walls seems to echo like the prints hung on them weren’t even there. The floor creaked in ways I hadn’t heard since we first moved in. My home had become a cavern of sounds I hadn’t noticed, because there wasn’t another adult to distract me from them.
Could I do this alone?
Turns out, I could. Two years now, he’s been gone two years. Sometimes it’s like yesterday, and I can barely bring myself to breathe much less clean up the branches in the yard or pull the weeds from the front garden. (The backyard weed garden is a shambles, the dogs have taken it over and stomped it out. I’m going to let it grow back next year too, I love my weed garden.) Most days I struggle with the fact that the kids need to be fed more than breakfast, and I need to eat more than breakfast. I have the files with the receipts of past work- plumber, electrician, 2nd electrician because I don’t like the first, roof people, gutter people. When something new comes up, I panic, and then I take care of it.
I let myself panic, and then I take care of it.
There was the night I was convinced a bat was hiding out in a closet, and I called Ryan for phone backup. He lives in Massachusetts, he wasn’t coming to save me. There’s the time I found a mouse in a bucket, having fallen through the drop ceiling when a tile was removed. There was the spider I threw a shoe at. Many spiders I’ve thrown a shoe at.
Bills, mortgages, taxes, pandemic. Solo parenting. I’ve done it all. With panic and with mayday calls, with emotional support and with writing groups.
Four years ago we bought a house. Our dream. My dream. The dream of an Army brat putting down roots. I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.
Solo Mom of Tiny & Loud Dragons 