kiwords

I was at a four-year-old’s birthday party today. Actually, Max was the one in attendance, but I was there as his backup. He had just met the birthday boy a few weeks ago at school, so he wasn’t comfortable being left at his house just yet. Come to think of it, I wasn’t all that comfortable with the thought of leaving him. Fortunately, the mom of the birthday boy (Adam, by the way, an adorable towheaded wee boy) was very understanding about it and perfectly happy to have me stay. Even though that meant adding me, Tre, and Raphael to the guest list. At least, she seemed to be ok with it. She was terrifically gracious about it, and the boys all behaved themselves, and I tried to help out…ok, getting off track here.
Anyhow, there I was, bouncing kids back into play whenever they tried to wander out of the back yard; making small talk with a bunch of moms I don’t know. I did my best to avoid the subject of dads, but…well…the subject will come up. One mom was chasing down her daughter with a bottle of sunscreen and she remarked, “She just burns so badly. You’re lucky, your boys are so brown, and they must not burn. Is your husband dark skinned?”
“Yes…um…he’s Mexican actually…but…we’re divorced.” Silence descended on the group as they looked back and forth between my three kids and me. I could see them thinking, her youngest is just two. They were shocked. Understand the demographic here. These are all homeschoolers. Christian, family values, homeschoolers. I went to a homeschool convention in June, and attended a talk for single homeschoolers. Out of thousands of participants in the convention, five single homeschoolers showed up. There simply aren’t a lot of us.
“Wow,” someone finally said, “have you been divorced long?”
“It’s been final for a little over a year.” Awkward silence. I don’t blame them for not knowing what to say, and I wanted to save them from their distress by launching into the tale of what happened. Fill the silence and oh, by the way, explain how it’s all his fault. But I try not to do that any more. I try not to exploit his failures to cover my shame at being the only divorced mom in the group. Hey, mistakes were made. Move on.
So I launched into a speech about how fortunate I am to have my parents, who have given me and my kids a place to live and made it possible for me to stay home. All true.
I’m not proud of this, but today’s not the first day I’ve thought longingly about how much easier it would be to be a widow.
Ah, what the heck.
Life is hard. God is good.