Since becoming a re-singled nu-bachelor parent, my experience of time has changed profoundly. It feels like there are twice as many things to do, in half the time. Take cooking, for instance. Or packing.
Getting into the car takes twice as long without a co-partner co-packing with you. It’s like tag wrestling, without anyone to tag. As a single parent, you are magically in two places at once – you’re outside hoovering the car before the big trip, and inside packing food and toiletries, with a dimly flickering part of your mind half-alert to the other dozen things still to do.
If you leave on Friday, you need to start packing on Monday. You say you’re going to leave at 10? Forget it. More like two. And because you’re doing it all, there is no-one else to blame when someone asks, “Dad, where are the sweets?” Oh dear.
Recently, we went away for the long weekend. Yes, the children ‘packed their own stuff’, saving a little time, but when we arrived at the destination there were no leggings, jerseys or toothbrushes. Loads of card games, fluffy toys and books though.
Likewise, in the endless ferrying of children from home to home, things get forgotten – school shoes, books, teddy-bears, digital devices. Forget them at your peril, or face a crosstown journey in rush hour. And so, as the children learn to be responsible for their things, so we learn to be responsible for keeping to the schedule we’ve agreed on. Whereas in my previous life I got to show up “soon” or “later”, now time is measured to the minute. These days, 6:45pm means just that.
There is a change in time’s rhythm from the flow of a single family to a split one. Fetching and dropping times, holiday switches and weekend swopovers are all hyper-negotiated so that everyone knows exactly what’s happening. This has more of a staccato feel, a binary on/off rhythm.
After five years of this, my kids, who have undeniably benefitted from the predictability still ask: “Dad, who’s picking me up from school tomorrow?” or “Am I with you tonight?” It takes time to understand time’s change.
In our split, my ex and I decided on two happy homes instead of one fraught one, and that’s what we’ve achieved, I think. We’re co-parents, not parallel ones. We’re punctual, yes, and there is plenty of communication and flexibility around the edges for when “life gets in the way”. Things change, and we change too. But time has become a master like never before.
Sometimes there is too much of it. When I am left alone after the kids have gone, for example. And sometimes, too little, like when they’re nearing the end of their allotted time with me. Just before the swop over, things sometimes get strained as we anticipate the shift to come, although this happens less often now.
It’s a dislocation, although increasingly a minor one. In the direct aftermath of our separation however, it felt like when the appointed hour approached for the swop-over, so the heavy gates of my confinement starting rattling, and as the small people left, that I was left waving goodbye through the bars. It takes time to heal, too.
Things are so much better with a rhythm to rely on, allowing time to smile on me too. Strangely dissociated, as the lone adult, you have the wonderful freedom to be the parent you really want to be. Ice cream for breakfast? Sure! Cereal for supper? Just make sure you eat enough. No-one is gonna die! And no, it’s not a popularity contest.
You check in with your ex, despite the residual pain that might involve, because it’s not really about you anymore. You have to make doubly sure you don’t undermine each other, but support your children through the tumult of separation.
Consistent boundaries, wherever you are, help the smaller people become happier big ones. The happier the mom, the happier the kids, and the happier I am too. We’re still a family somehow, but differently constellated.
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