My 2 1/2-year-old son was simply putting together magnetic shapes in those requisite primary colors, making his "painting." But his hands caught my attention. His hands—and the determination that moved them—seemed startlingly independent. These were shadow gestures of adulthood. I was sad to see the baby disappearing, but I also felt swooning pride for the boy emerging. Sometimes my adoration in these moments feels so strong that I worry I could become the dreaded "smother mother," losing my sense of boundaries. (An old family story comes to mind: "Scram," my father once whispered in his mother's ear when she lingered too long, trying to kiss him goodbye.) When my husband walks into the room, however, I begin again to divert the flow of my emotion in two directions, maternal and wifely.
But what if I were on my own as a parent? I present myself with this challenge almost daily. It is not only a question of keeping my swoon in check, but also one of logistics. Could I make enough money to keep us afloat? Would I be able to single-handedly make the decisions—big and small—that become the very marrow of parenting? How would I take a shower? It's a fear-and-gratitude game, but these are not unreasonable questions, and they're increasingly the reality of many mothers' lives.
Two recent memoirs—Accidentally on Purpose, by Mary F. Pols, and Split, by Suzanne Finnamore—explore this landscape. Pols, a 43-year-old film critic in the Bay Area, tells the old girl-walks-into-bar-has-one-night-stand-then-has-baby story. In the memoir that Pols's publicity machine has already dubbed the "real-life Knocked Up," the author does indeed have a child by her 29-year-old "hookup," and he commits to helping—while making it clear that he has no romantic interest in her. Much as Pols's story resembles the Judd Apatow movie, it is distinct in its heartfelt description of a woman who has come up against the edge of youth and expectation. "In a few more years I'd become the sad woman who wanted something everyone knew she couldn't have," she writes of her decision. "My desires would no longer be appropriate, like a schoolgirl kilt on a gray-haired matron."
Finnamore, on the other hand, finds herself plunged into single motherhood when her husband arrives home from work, kisses her on the cheek, changes out of his work clothes, downs a martini, and declares, "I deserve happiness." Finnamore and "N," as she calls her husband throughout, are a wealthy couple, also in California, with a toddler son, whom she calls "A." One imagines the interior of their home, from the author's description, as restrained, all clean lines and stainless steel, but still it cannot contain Finnamore's emotion after her husband's departure. "I am going crazy, and no one can help me," she writes, describing the near-impossible task of tending to another in the midst of one's own heartache. "This is what really happens to wives who are left with small children."
Next Page: Single Moms: The Same, but also Different
