Padre Soltero
My two sons live with me full time. Isaac is nine years old. And Matthew is six. The two are quite unique and different in their own ways. But when all is said and done, each one - it turns out - is a lot like me.
Isaac is chubby, light-skinned, and profoundly intellegent. He astounds teachers and other adults everywhere with his degree of precociousness. He's nine going on nineteen. He wants to be "the richest man in the world" so he can donate all his money to the homeless. In class he refuses to stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance. His favorite movie is Roots. And he reads everything he can get his hands on. It's gotten so I have to hide my personal journal, lest he might discover that Nicole is not really his aunt or that Monica is more than just a co-worker. He's rude and oppositional in his own way, and he loves to be the clown. He's just like me - only better.
Matthew is my baby. He's a skinny, porcupine-haired live wire. He's the one who doesn't eat. He's the one who eats a single Chicken McNugget in the time it takes me to gobble down a whole Quarter Pounder with cheese. I love to see him eat. At six years old, he's already a neurotic. He collects things. His favorite thing this season is to hoard store reciepts in the pockets of his jeans. You can imagine how angry I get when I open the dryer at our neighborhood laundromat to find a weeks worth of our clothes littered with shreds of paper that were once Walgreen's or Target or Alberton's receipts. But my anger subsides when I think of and remember the things that I used to collect at his age. These days I limit my collecting to mostly watches and pens.
In my opinion the notion of parenting is often fraught with paradoxes. My children bring to me both happiness and resentment, bitterness and pleasure, guilt and pride, anxiety and relief. I want so much for my children - happiness, love, and contentment. But what I mostly want for them, and in turn for me, is for them to be able to make it on their own in this world. And I feel a deep responsibility for providing them with the tools necessary to achieve this.
In my eyes, parenting is a magical mixture of guidance and love. Guidance and Love. Guidance without love is not enough, neither is love without guidance. In these times the lack of one or the other can lead our children to paths of unhappiness and woe. I see it happen all the time. It's all around me. At the same time, I am also very careful not to allow my children to engulf my whole life. I have seen mothers dedicate their whole lives to their children. And once their children have grown into adulthood and were gone, there was nothing left in the lives of these mothers.
I've done the math, and although my children live with me full time, I only spend about three hours a day with them. This must sound terrible to you, but I'm pretty sure three hours is all it adds up to. And unfortunately, I think this is becoming more and more common among working parents. So who is raising our children?
The first hour when we get up in the morning I become the drill sergeant - barking out orders that they get dressed, eat breakfast, and brush their teeth. Time is so tight in the morning that we rarely have the luxury of "Good morning, Mijo." "Good morning, Dad." After dropping them off at school, about nine or ten hours pass before I see them again. By the time I pick them up from my mother's house, I'm so tired and drained from my day at work that I become a little less strict at enforcing their completion of homework or nightly shower. (Kids get so much homework these days!) The last hour of the day we spend unwinding, usually on our own - just three roommates getting ready to call it a day.
And that's right about when my guilt starts to kick in. Guilt accuses me of not spending those famous "twenty minutes" of quality time with each child. It's guilt that forces me to stay home with them on weekends while I neglect time for myself. There's a lot of guilt involved for a single dad raising two boys.
But I also pride myself in doing things for them that few parents I know do - quirky things that can sometimes balance out for me the hours of my perceived neglect. Every so often, I'll write them their very own bedtime stories. Usually these stories are rehashed folklore that I somehow make our own. I've written my children stories as corny as La Llorona at Roosevelt Park, or The Story of Aztlan, and even The Day Cesar Chavez Came for Dinner. Our very own fairy tales. They really seem to get a kick out of these stories.
I have raised my children to be pretty independent. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing. But since they have only one parent involved in their lives, I figure things might become pretty hard for them in the future. It's best that they learn to do at least the basic things on their own because I can't always be there to do it for them. So they know how to do things like microwave frozen corn dogs or Cup of Noodles or serve their own cereal; wash their own dishes; shower themselves; dress themselves; clean the house; order their own food at Taco Bell - you know, stuff that would make other kids their age pretty anxious. In fact, I know some eighteen year olds who can't or refuse to even do some of these things!
Yet, there are times, guilt or no guilt, when I just need to get out - to be with people of my own approximate age. Now, I'm only a social worker eight hours out of the day. But I'm Latino twenty four hours of every day. And as it is for every good Latino, the occassion often arises when I need to bust out and get a little crazy with friends, lovers, and comrades. These are the times that I drop the kids off with my mother and really let out some steam. These are the times that I'm able to laugh, dance, eat, drink, and be totally free from the worries and responsibilities of fatherhood - at least for a few hours.
But with hangovers returns guilt - so much guilt. Guilt because I didn't spend more time with the kids. So I end up spending the following day with the kids, lying on the couch nursing my hangover, watching movies like E.T. or playing video games. Yes, video games! Despite all the negative effects we know video games have on children, I stand firm when I say, "Video games are God's gift to the single parent!"
Of course, I also do those "functional" things to relieve stress and prevent my burning out on kids, career, and life. Most mornings I get up at six and jog 'round the streets of my neighborhood for about half hour. In my mind I become Rocky running in the pre-dawn morning as he prepares for his bout with Apollo Creed. Sometimes I go to the gym after work to exercise and, of course, check out the women. A lot of times me and the kids go out to eat or to the movies or to the toy store. And, of course, I'm always writing - whether it's e mailing propoganda or writing poems or short stories or writing about my many exploits in that private journal that I have to hide from my son, I'm always writing. Whether or not doing all these things help me balance my family, work, and personal time, I cannot say for sure. All I can say is that each day that I retain at least one degree of sanity over my clients is good enough for right now.