I don’t wish Single Motherhood on anyone.

It’s not a situation that any woman enters into with glee and racing anticipation - no little girl grows up with dreams of becoming a Single Mom.

And yet, I can say with full certainty:  I would not trade the last two years for anything.  They taught me more than four years of University, several trips around the world, and four years in a monogamous, committed relationship ever could.

I say this with knowledge of the risk of sounding trite: those two lonely, soul-searching years taught me how to be happy and confident with my tiny party of two.

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It was quiet in the Safeway as the sun dipped down in the parking lot outside.  I blew a wisp of hair out of my eyes and unloaded some green and red peppers on to the conveyer belt as my son played with a packet of Transformer stickers and my boyfriend (which man - is there no good alternative to this word?  I am in my thirties and saying the word boyfriend makes me feel like I am 14) was loading bags into the grocery cart.  We were making quesadillas for dinner: veggies, wraps, salsa and benign items lined up in a row.

There was a blip as the cashier scanned a white onion and then a loud, startlingly clear voice asked:

“Mommy.  Why are you and my Daddy not friends?”

I froze, vegetable in mid air in my hand, and looked at my clear-eyed son.

“What?” I was numb, and I glanced sidelong at the cashier, looking for help.

“My Daddy,” he said impatiently, obviously wanting to know,”Why are you not friends with my Daddy?”

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My friend Lara never ceases to amaze me with her grace.  A quiet, intelligent woman with an aura of calm, she somehow manages to juggle an active social life, superior Motherly skills, and a prestigious job in pharmaceuticals.  She’s also beautiful, and a ton of fun, and I don’t think she’s going to be a single Mom for long.

Even though her husband is (in my totally biased opinion), a bit of a jerkwad - she handles him with aplomb.  In fact, she also handles his exes with deft grace: her husband had been married once before he married Lara and my friend is friends with the First Wife of her Ex. What?  I know.

This weekend Lara was telling me with her usual practical intonation that she’d gone for dinner with Cathy, the First Wife of her ex, and I was watching her with my mouth agape and my shoulders slumped a little in defeat.

“Man, I’m not nearly as good a person as you.” I thought of my ex and his ex girlfriends and though we were never married, I am certain I’ll never have any desire to eat artichoke dip on the patio with a woman he’s slept with.

That’s how it’s been, with my ex boyfriends, anyway.  I think of most of them fondly - remember Dale’s ice blue eyes, Jay’s riotous sense of adventure, the earnestness of Derek - but I don’t particularly want to be bosom buddies with any of them, and I’m not overly interested in their current conquests.

But it struck me, over my weekend conversation with Lara - that perhaps the current relationship of your ex is a little more significant when the two of you share a child together.

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I had a meeting with my boss when I was 9 months pregnant, nearly ripping at the seams of my maternity shirt.  I was uncomfortable and somewhat cantankerous and I was itching from every pore, eager to get this cumbersome pregnancy over with.  I wanted to expel the baby, and...love him a bit, of course - but more than anything, I wanted to get back to work.  I wanted to make phone calls, send emails and get stuff done, without a gigantic protruding belly, niggling worry about my potential skills as a Mother, and constant heartburn.

“Gary, I’ll be back at work in 6 months,”I assured my manager,”I can’t wait to return.”

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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.

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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My separation from my son’s Father was far from amicable: there were mediators, lawyers, harsh words and tears. Finally, there was silence and quiet despair, the tangible leftovers of wreckage: dry mouth, a diminished appetite for anything but bed. There was a period of time that spanned over a year where the two of us exchanged almost no words. Monthly visitation was a horror: cockles were raised, hands clenched, each of us teetering on the verge of curse words, imaginary jabs, tears.

Two years into the split, and things are markedly better. There is still tension, of course, but there is also occasional affability: sometimes there’s even a shared chuckle. On Wednesday mornings, I arrive at his home to snooze on the couch until our son wakes up, so my ex can get to an early start at work. He lets me take his dog for runs with me — my ex-dog, actually, the canine we both love.

There aren’t many things the two of us have done that well together (besides help create our astonishingly cool little boy) - but one area we’ve excelled at is respect, when it comes to one another’s love lives. I know my ex has had girlfriends since our split. We have mutual friends and I’ve reluctantly listened to breathless recounts of his conquests. And, he would likely know that I’ve also dipped my toe in the dating scene - all he would have to do is google my name and this column would come up. But he doesn’t care to know, and neither do I. If he is visiting a girlfriend, he says he’s with a “friend.” If I’m on a date, I say I’m going grocery shopping. We don’t care to pour salt into each other’s wounds by flaunting our sex lives in each other’s faces, and for that, really, I’m proud of us.

We are moving upward, onward: it’s true that the opposite of hate is apathy. I actually kind of hope for love for him again, I think it softens people. In any case, falling in love is never a horrible thing. We’re not exactly comrades, but we’re tentatively polite and that’s a great start. Enough of a start, I wonder, to be his Facebook friend?

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I think, much like labor and childbirth, one has to experience the blindsiding pain of kid-addled divorce (or permanent separation from a life partner) to fully fathom the pain.

I’d been through plenty of breakups before separating from my son’s father, and though each one of those hurt at the time, the sting was nothing compared to the devastating pain I felt to lose the Father of my baby: the one man I thought I would spend my entire life with, that we would spend our entire lives with.

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2007 was the year I left everything I owned in a towering heap on my driveway: a pillar of dust, lost hope, and chewed ends. It was Spring when I left and the ground in my prairie city was still brown, half-frozen.

If I looked closely, I could see feisty green blades of grass scrapping their way up to the light, toward new warming sun. I sat in the backseat of my own Jeep, holding my baby’s hand, as we drove away from my little house for the very last time. Tears filled my eyes and I felt like vomiting. I couldn’t imagine it would ever get better. I couldn’t imagine my heart would ever be right again. The only reason I had for garnering even a shred of hope, was that wide eyed tiny boy in the seat beside me. I needed to find the sun for him.

***

It’s now the dusk of 2008, a year and a half later. My little boy - the one who is running and laughing and expressing his own opinions - is with his Dad and paternal grandparents this week for the holidays.

I expected to feel a vast emptiness the minute I dropped him off with his Father. But he kissed my cheek and squeezed me in a shockingly strong little hug and said,”I have fun Mommy. I will see you very soon.”

I looked at him and touched his cheek, amazed at his adaptability, his good naturedness, the way he finds happiness in everything.

He touched my hair and looked at me with that tilted-head stare of his:

“I will call you,” he said solemnly, and he is a boy of his word and so I kissed his head and retreated to my car, blowing kisses. He is OK and so am I.

***

2008 has been an incredible year. I am inspired by my boy, filled with hope for the future, and buoyed (and still somewhat surprised) by my own ability to take care of us both: and do it well. I am incredibly grateful for my family, for the healing power of the ocean and the mountains, for twenty-year friends and brand new ones in this city of my youth.

I’m grateful too, for my corner of the Internet, where I can write, and fret, and take a deep inhalation and share our story to a willing audience. That is an incredible thing.

I’ve found peace, and I hope you have, too

Thank you so much for reading and commenting and sharing your stories here, this year.  This is one of my favorite places to write, and that’s because all of you.  Wishing you heartfelt joy, uncontrollable belly laughter, and lots of gingerbread this holiday season!

My son and I arrive back at our home as early dusk settles into the trees: the wind is whirling through winter-thinned trees and white lights spackle through the leaves of the yards of our neighbors. I’ve been here only a year and a half, but I’m already converted to the enviro-conscious lifestyle of the Pacific Northwest: I carry a re-usable bag filled with ripe tomatoes-on-the-vine, fresh garlic, yellow onions, and whole pepper: tonight I’m making roasted tomato soup.  I’m wearing yoga pants and a faux-fur lined hoodie, a warm cap pulled low over my hair.  My son is three: suddenly he can undo his own seatbelt, open the car door and leap out joyfully, terrifyingly.

“Unky!” he yells, sprinting in the direction of my 29-year-old brother, who is draping lights across a rhododendron bush in the house we have bought together: a joint venture born of being in places we Never Expected We’d Be, at this time in our lives.

“Hey bud!” says my brother, stopping to embrace my blond whirlwind in a hug,”Hey, I’m putting lights up in the tree.  You wanna help?”

My three-year-old son stands back and stares, feeding mini-lights to my younger brother, his hands encased in wooly gloves and a baseball hat pulled low over his eyes. He suddenly looks like he’s 10.

His Dad lives here now, but this weekend he’s back visiting friends in the City where we used to live.  In the meantime,  my son is surrounded in so much love, he doesn’t notice.  He’s got my Mom, his Nanny, his playmate and perpetual cheerleader.  He’s got my Dad, who’s lost all his Gruff and Intimidation exclusively for his only grandchild.  My son is also best pals with my brother, who is the consummate cool Dude and exactly the kind of Unky every little boy wants: a snowboarding, dirt-biking, warm-hearted, role model.  And - if Nolan had his way, he’s steal my brother’s girlfriend out from under his nose: he loves hanging out with Alex and her long blonde hair and green-blue eyes, her sisterly hand and her always accommodating vibe.

***

I stood outside my car, clutching my bag of produce and French bread, watching my brother and my son interact.

I spent so many months aching over the loss of Nolan’s father in our lives.  I realize: it wasn’t him, so much, it was the thought of “Family” that I mourned.  A mom, a dad, a child, in one house.

But those ingredients don’t make a family.  It’s love, and devotion, and sacrifice, and blood - and a lot of compassion.

My family is different from what I envisioned, but it’s every bit as good.  With white likes twinkling and People Who Love Him abounding at every turn, I am confident that my little boy is lacking nothing, this Christmas.  This Christmas, there is no guilt.  This piecemeal, loving family, is every bit the real thing.