At the moment, just at my entrance point to my mid-thirties - I am in the best shape of my life. This is foreign to me, and a little maddening, because I think: why didn’t I love my body when I was 22 and didn’t have to work to have a nice jean bum? How, when I was 18, did I ever think my body wasn’t suitable for a bikini? (hint: I had a diminutive chest that, at the time, shamed me. Now I love it because small things get hassled by gravity a little later than giant water bomb things, and also kind of look better in dresses.)

I was inspired last summer at the BlogHer Conference, when I met Linda for the second time in “real life” and she talked about putting together a fitness site. Wicked, I thought, awesome. If anyone can inspire people that they can look better than ever after babies, it’s Linda - who shredded herself into shape after her second born solely via do-it-yourself methods.

I was in pretty crap shape after my split with my son’s father. I subsisted on black coffee and jittery adrenaline, an occasional handful of Dorito’s. By the time I was ready to do something for myself, get really in shape, it was almost two years post-split. I was skinny, gaunt, with little folds of fat in inopportune places: on my arms and hanging from my legs. My stomach was flat but soft and bloated, I essentially looked like hell.

In January of this year, I wrote down that I needed to get in shape. Since then, 5 days a week, no matter what, I make time to exercise. I’ll run half an hour or two hours - and if I really don’t have time at all and I need to combat the internal protests that, god this proposal is due and prospecting is needed - I’ll just slip in Ye Olde Jillan Michaels Standby - because twenty minutes is the time I would otherwise take for a coffee break.

But I realize I’m a bit of an anomaly. Because I primarily work from home, I can go on a 45 minute run at lunch. I generally do a loop around my neighborhood, past the marina and sometimes up through the forest paths. And I can come back to my office - at home - and sit down in my sweaty yoga pants and get right back to work. No one glares at me because of my ill smell, and I don’t feel self conscious that my hair is in plasticky wet tendrils on my red-flushed face. When I’m swamped, I work straight through to 5 and don’t even bother showering to pick up my son. That’s what deodorant is for. Plus, it’s daycare, not a board meeting.

I realize I couldn’t work out this way if I worked in an office job downtown. I’d have to shower after or at least take the 20 extra minutes to make myself presentable. And the thought of interacting with people face to face after I’ve killed myself on hills outside in the sun - well - I’d rather just deal with people by phone, and via email.

So I’m curious, Single Moms - do you exercise consistently? How do you make time? Is this something you’d be willing to do at all costs, even if it means hiring a babysitter 3 nights a week so you can kickbox? Even though I know I have it good, I’m always looking for time saving tips to magnify these muscles.

I have a recently divorced friend who blames the breakup of his marriage on the demise of the stay-at-home housekeeping Mom.

“I think the model just worked better,”he explained,” Back in the boomer days. When Mom stayed home with the kids and Dad brought home the bacon.”

My pal is not a misogynist in any way, so I just remained silent and looked at him curiously.

“There was no resentment about making the bed and packing the lunches,”he said,”Because it was balanced by the fact that Daddy’s bringing home the bacon.  Now, often, Mom and Dad both bring home the bacon, but Mom’s expected to cook it and then clean the dishes and Dad still kinda wants to hang on the couch after dinner with his socks balled up on the floor and… it’s messed with everything.”

“Hmm.” I said, considering,”Huh.”

And I wondered: is it true that in this Generation, Moms are bringing home as much bacon as Dad?  What impact does that have on divorce, family balance, and career success?

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Here are a few of the gifts the last two years have bestowed:

• A small boy with pudgy hands and an orange Popsicle streaked face, morphing astonishingly fast into a boy.
• Innumerable walks through sloping muddy forest paths, on various quests for slugs and peet moss, the perfect sun slant through the trees.
• Sorbet for dinner, cheese for dessert, imaginary dragons in fortresses made of sheets, my imagination ignited by the power and force of his.
• An endless number of books, stacked in piles on our knees: hours of reading about Andrew’s Loose Tooth or Stinky Socks while we huddle under cool blue sheets, listening to the rain pelt outside and feeling our fingers inter-wrapped, contentedly.

Those are a just a small sampling of the wonder  I’ve experienced in the last two years of my life: my life spent as a single Mother.

I’m accustomed to being the only Mom at the parent/child floor hockey shinnies. I’m content to sit solo at the pool’s edge at 5:30 on Thursdays,  while my son dives for rings and emerges exuberant.  I’ve mastered the craft of cooking dinner for 1.5, and subsisting surprisingly well on wilted salad remains and mildly regurgitated avocado sandwiches.  I love being a Mom, I am astonished by how much I love my boy.  The experiences we’ve had together, me as his solo Mama and he as my affable Sidekick will stay with me forever.  These years will go down in my Life Book as the most probable reason for my life’s meaning.

But.

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