The Balancing Act…

Everything in life is just that…a balancing act. I am finding this is even more so for parenthood and more specifically single parenthood.

Someone once told me that you can never be both a mom and a dad. Ok, I understand that. Physically, No...you can not be both. And yes, there are limitations to all of us and how much we can be for our children. But I think one can try as hard as hell to be as much emotionally and physically that they can be. No, I am not a replacement for David and never deluded myself into thinking I ever could be. But I will attempt to fill the gaps that he has left as well as I can.

I remember after David was diagnosed I used to watch him. Watch him interact with Alec. Watch him be a dad. We never gave up hope, but in the back of my mind I knew there was a very real chance that David was not going to be around to raise Alec. The diagnosis was terminal and although we fought like hell for David’s survival…that was ever present in the back of our minds.

God, it pissed me off. That Alec should lose his dad so young. That he would not ever know the amazing person he was. That from the young age of one and a half, Alec was never going to know his father as Cancer free…as healthy. I used to scream at the universe. With all the shitty dads out there, the dads that chose not to be present or who were in their kid’s lives but total jackasses. Why? Here David was. An amazing dad and yet he was not going to get to see his son grow up. He would miss his first day of school. His first heartbreak. He would not get to teach him to drive. Or send him off to college. It all seemed so damn unfair. And yet, as we have all painfully learned. Who said life was going to be fair? No one. And Alec is lucky in the fact that he did have such a wonderful father who loved and adored him. Even if he is no longer with him today and as he grows into a man, Alec will know that he was loved by his daddy and that if there was any way in his powers, David would have stayed. Would still be here today. And hopefully that will be enough…

David knew this would be an eventuality too. He rarely spoke of it. But he knew. It made him sad. It made him angry. But near the end he seemed to find some sort of peace with it. He worried about Alec and hoped that someday I would find love again so that Alec could see how two people in love should be. He wanted him to grow up knowing what a good relationship was and how it was supposed to be. He wanted Alec to have that role model. I thought he was fucking nuts. How could he be ok with another man raising his child? And yet, now I realize it was not about being ok with it. It was David being the ever pragmatic soul he was and that he was coming to terms with the eventuality of his death. And in the end, he was just trying to make sure we were all going to be ok since he was not going to be physically here much longer to do so. It sucked. But a lot about Cancer and this whole shitty journey sucked.

I remember early on, and even more so once the Cancer began to slowly break down David’s body, that I began watching his interactions with Alec. How he played with him. What he did. Because loath as I am to admit it, men and women are different. I may not be your stereotypical girl, but I am still a woman and I interacted differently with Alec than David did. I was more nurturing. More “motherly.” David was just as tender and loving, but he was also playful and fun! He would pick Alec up and swing him around, throw him to couch and then tickle the hell out of him. He would crawl around on all fours and get right down in the thick of it and just play. I watched all of this and drank it is. Capturing every moment. I think guys tend to be more “physical” with the kids. And I am not making broad generalizations or stereotypes here. I do not want a barrage of irate women emailing me. Ask anyone who knows me, I am all about anti-stereotypes and I break many typecasts every day. But some things I think are just how we are wired.

But as I watched, I committed to memory how they played. How they interacted. And I made a conscious decision three years ago that I would be all of those things and more. So now here we are. David is gone and I am continuing on this road of single parenthood.

I run around. I swing him like a monkey. We dance. We tickle. We play cars. We shoot storm troopers. I tend to be very physical with him and romp about. I will never be able to replace the loss of his father. I know that. I will never be able to fill the void that David has left. But I will endeavor to give him the best that I am able of both worlds…