Surprise! I'm a single parent

How do you get a good lawyer?

It’s not like flatmates where you put an ad in the paper and they line up to be interviewed. It’s not like husbands where – well how did that happen?

Lawyers cost three hundred dollars an hour to interview. Three hundred dollars!!!

So I put an add on my work bulletin board. Discretely. In amoungst does anyone know a good panel beater, painter, mechanic, piano tuner I placed ‘divorce lawyer wanted’.

I got 5 recommendations and now I need to come up with some criteria. What I’d really like to be able to assess is how well they identified and secured a good share of assets, how cheaply they did it and how fast. But I’m not sure how to guage this. Instead I think about how easy it will be to get to their office, whether I could park there and what their office hours might be. I want to know the hourly rate but …. are the faster ones more expensive?

Again in all this I realise that although I feel poor and like some sort of emotinal refugeee Im actually in a better position than most. I have a job where I have flexibility to head out and meet with a lawyer, I have a super scheme I can break in to in order to pay a lawyer and I have some assets to split. But why do I just feel completely resentful I have to pay someone to do my negotiating for me?

I have some numbers and I’ll write my questions down:

About how long and how much do you think this will take?

Will you be able to take my phone calls?

Will you be able to get him to be a better parent?

Could you get him to take all his rubbish away?  I have rooms of the house I can’t get into because of his things and I think I may need to get a boarder in order to pay you… hmm maybe that last question I should keep to myself.

So lawyers – how can you tell a good one? Do you really need one? All this and more maybe in a future bloglet from the erratic surprised single parent.

The funny thing is that while I feel like I’m suffering my own little economic downturn the country seems to be coming along for the ride too. Petrol prices and interest rate rises and all the flow on effects of those things are hitting everyone hard. Every week there are stories in the paper about how to cut back and save money. Unfortunately there is not usually much advice I haven’t already given myself. These are my porridge days. Having just cleared the credit card of the debt my husband and I had when we split up I was feeling marvellously financially secure. In my mind I was thinking about my kids birthday in September and the bright shiny bike I would easily buy her. A friend of mine was telling me about his financial problems and I offered happily to lend him next months rent. It felt soooooo good to help someone else and not be the person who might need help. There’s a tree in the garden who’s roots are blocking a drain and I was going to get it out before winter and the lawn becomes a bog again. I am doing really well I thought. Then last week happened – it happened gradually. The dog got attacked by another dog and the first vet bill was $240. The same day the dog registration fee came in for over $100. The day after the school sent a bill for over $500. It was still kind of ok and manageable and I was seriously intending to pay the ‘optional’ school fees I have always paid. But then came the biggie – a three thousand dollar bill that I wasn’t expecting. OK you got me now! I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that my 3k surprise bill came from my ex. And now he wants to engage lawyers to settle up our affairs. How much will that cost? The thing about porridge is it really isn’t that bad – in fact it’s quite nice. And at something like $3 a packet it’s a really cheap breakfast compared to the cereal I usually have.  But eating porridge and cabbage and pumpkin isn’t going to help me straight away – I need to borrow money or break into my retirement savings. Writing this down I just realised how lucky I am though. I’m lucky I have a friend I could ask to lend money from. I’m lucky I have some retirement savings. And lucky I haven’t already used the savings up! The place I want to be is financial independence. It’s a place where I’m no longer tied to my ex-partners finances, where a 3k unplanned bill won’t materialise unexpectedly. A place where I do porridge out of choice and preferably in advance. Disentangling myself from my relationship seems to be a continuous thing that sometimes I feel like that Greek mythology character repeatedly rolling a rock up a mountain. (or whatever) only in my case its repeatedly paying off three thousand dollars.

When we split up all I wanted was to get out out out. So I was prepared to deal on anything – anything! I just wanted out. And one of the things I agreed about was shared care.

Part of me thought shared care would be a good idea. My ex has a (now grown) son who he never parented and in part this was because he only saw his son every 4 weeks for a weekend. His son is a lovely guy but it’s not really got anything to do with his dad in a practical sense. My ex never was much of a pareant to my kids- in fact he was completely not a parent. I thought well, if I’m not around he will probably take more responsibility.

Recently I went away for a week and my girls stayed with their dad. What we all leant from this I think is the terrific survival skills they have, the fact that I have good neighbors and, you’ll be very bored with this repetitive theme: what a great mum I have. He disappeared frequently and didn’t tell the kids where he was going or when he’d be back, he didn’t feed them, and he left them at my place (alone) to graze from the fridge and watch tv (or maybe they broke in its not entirely clear).

Hmmmm. So they ate noodles and cheese on toast and then just toast and the canned stuff. They contacted my friend and neighbor when they needed help and my mother too. Good kids. They didn’t bother me cos they thought I’d worry. They were right!

The understanding is that eventually when he is organised we will do shared care. Right now he has them every second weekend. I figure not too much can go wrong every second weekend. At first I worried he’d be a santa clause daddy that they’d be getting late nights and sugar and fun trips from while I’d be the ogre mother coming in with the healthy food and bed time rules. Needn’t have worried at all. Turns out kids like regular meals more than random sugar.

Will he do structure and bed time when he has them more often? Oh bugger it – Will they be happy/ secure? And a biggie – how on earth can we inflict a lifestyle where they have to pack up and move every week or two weeks? I wouldn’t like that.

Maybe I don’t need to worry. Its been a year since I said yes and there’s still no sign of shared care happening. Maybe its something he likes to say he does rather than something that actually happens. Like his words used to say ‘I love you’ but his actions showed otherwise. Maybe shared care will never happen. I know as long as we have theoretical shared care that he doesn’t need to pay child support and I suspect that’s part of it. And what’s really scarey about this scepticism I have about why shared care isn’t actually happening is that if I’m right then he just isn’t ever really going to be there for the kids.

It’s such a middle class white bread luxury dilemna. I worry about passive neglect when he has them and frankly I don’t worry that much – they are really sensible kids. And I worry that they don’t have a quality Dad. Maybe I  don’t need to worry. They will just get more organised. And they will probably assert themselves aroudn what they want. They are pretty good at that now.

Mornings are not always perfect in our household. This morning was a pearler. I think the ingrediants for success were these:

1. Six year old was in bed early and thus not a major grump. Really she was born needing coffee in the morning but I don’t think we should introduce this to her till she’s 16 or 17. (Hmmm is there a market for junior coffee? Some sort of wake up elixir that doesn’t give them the jitters at play time when the effect wears off?) I’m JOKING please don’t bother to send me a comment on that.

2. My 11 year old got busy and made most of her own and her sister’s lunch while I walked the dog.

3. I didn’t ask if they had breakfast and they didn’t tell me that they didn’t – so I didn’t feel compelled to insist. The six year old without coffee just can’t seem to cope with the thought of eating first thing. Her stomach just doesn’t register hunger and she gets really antsy when you are asking her to make lunchbox choices too. It’s like she can’t project to a time later in the day when she might need food. This week I compromised and bought her white bread which she is viewing as a treat and its certainly is a treat for me. Instead of a grumpy child after school who didn’t have breakfast and dumped her healthy lunch Ive got a lovely wee thing who chowed down on a vegemite sarnie.

3. The dog and I had a good walk. I watched the sun rise all pink and purple and yellows and he chased a rabbit.

4. Ive finally got enough flexibility in my work hours (thanks to my Mum) that I’m not frantically trying to get out of the door to clock on. It makes so much difference not to be in a rush.

5. I got a good nights sleep myself. I forget all the time that 8 hours of sleep and Im a much nicer person. Go figure.

Friday night and it’s raining and raining and raining. It’s kind of nice. I’ve a polar fleece blanket over my knees with my ten year old fluffy slippers over my socks. Outside the water on the roof is funneling through the functional spouting system until it meets the big gaps where the down pipe connection should be. At this point it forms an artful cascade and make a noise that maybe sounds like a running urinal but I prefer to think of as ‘water feature’. If the rain is hard I don’t hear my water feature – just drumming on the roof – but as it slacks off the pipeless sound effects begin and do you know what they signal?

That sound means I don’t need to be getting started with Friday night laundry loads because the environmental dryer will not be operation tomorrow. Well OK maybe there will be some wind but there’s also likely to be a whole lot of wet to go with it. So I can blog and play games online and not feel the least bit guilty.

Friday night washing has been a feature of my life for the eleven years Ive been a working Mum. I try and get it started and done as early in the weekend as I can on the theory that then Im free to do other things. Im sure the people who have rented the house next door over the past decade think they live next to a crazy woman since Ive been known to get out there at midnight on friday night to hang out my washing but hey – its fabulous to be lying in bed on Saturday morning knowing my washing is already getting dry.

Sorting washing is the thing I just hate. Ok I also hate loads of postage stamp small items from my little girls – winter means at least 14 sets of socks and 14 knickers and a good helping of singlets and so on to get on and off the line.  I try and pair them as I peg so I don’t have the tedium of pairing from the basket. Gee you just don’t want to know the way I orgainse my washing line in a per person per row sort of way to try and minimise the horror of facing Mount Laundry at the end of the weekend.

However this weekend all washing looks like its off.   Good thing too.

Tonight I was talking to someone about beauty. What did she say? Something like: “Some people are gifted with attractiveness.” She is in her 20s. I am in my 40s.

I said to her you know what? As you get older you want to be with people because of their substance and not what they look like.  But anyway, you also realise how everyone is attractive and there’s a lot more diversity in what seems to be attractive. I really believe that.

When I was younger I thought I was so ugly. My assessment was based on not being perfect. I had much much higher standards for myself than anyone else – I was harsher on me. And this impacted on my self esteem – I dressed to be the third most interesting person in the room. Does that sound weird? I always assumed there were brighter and more beautiful than me and I viewed compliments with suspicion.

My Mum said: You are so beautiful when you smile – and I heard: You are not beautiful except theres a flicker of something when you smile.

I have two beautiful girls and it occured to me one day that to have such georgous kids maybe I wasn’t as 100 percent ugly as I thought. The other thing that helped was a digital camera. I spent the first two years being official photographer and then i thought we aren’t wasting fim here lets let the kids drive. Not stressed out by pictures I could delete I relaxed and had fun and now I have some pics of me that show someone who looks fine. Pity I waited till I was forty to understand that but that’s cool.

I am actively thinking about ways I can let my children know they always were and always will be beautiful.

I touched a nerve when I blogged about what being a parent is about. I said:

“My kids also spend regular time with their Dad. I wouldn’t exactly call him a parent … but there is no doubt he cares about the kids and to a kid having someone around who says he loves them is often just as good as a real parent – as long as there is an actual parent around too.”

 Well Kim I didn’t intend this blog to be a big whine about my ex – I was rather thinking I’d use it to explore my new state on my own. I would quite like to get to a place where I don’t have to bite my tongue about him in front of my kids.  But you asked and I will tell you from my probably hugely biased point of view:

When I met my partner in my early 20s he was already a Dad and I had no experience of parenting. He told me over and over how he loved and missed his child and wanted to spend time with him.

In the early days I noticed he had the odd tendency to race off fishing on his child’s one weekend a month visit with us. At the time I stupidly put this down to the completely terrible weather where I live coupled with his passion for sitting for hours in a little boat in the cold of the ocean hauling in kaimoana (that’s Maori for seafood I thought I might try and bring in a little NZ culture). And I also noticed that all the ‘caring’ – feeding the child and thinking about their needs went straight away to me.

I became a sort of parent secretary for him:

“He might need shoes on before he goes outside.”

“He should probably go to bed now.”

“why don’t you call him?” “Why don’t you see if you can get his school reports?” “What are you gong to get him for his birthday?” “Why don’t you check he knows about safe sex?”

My husband to be had a knack of saying the right things and being very charming and I was absolutely smitten by him. Five years into the relationship we had our first child. Before she was conceived I made sure he understood we were parenting together. Oh yes yes he said I love beng a parent. Before she was born he told me how helpful he was going to be, how he knew how to change nappies and just loved babies. During my pregnancy he carefully outlined bit by bit the limitations he needed to put on the scope of his involvement. He told me he could never get up to a crying baby in the night – because he worked with power tools and might have an accident if his sleep was broken. I accepted this. Stupid me! That was the year he discovered Warcraft  and stayed up late night after night swearing and shouting and being angry as he killed little monsters. But not once did he bring me our child.

He told me it was very important he was happy and happiness for him was fishing. I said I only want you to be happy dear – you go fishing – but perhaps occasionally when you are not getting up on the weekends to fish I might have a lie in? That’s another thing he said – I’m very tired after a weeks working – try and keep the children quiet in the mornings so I can have a lie in (when not fishing). 

Then my husband remembered he always liked tramping and hunting – and soon his fishing was supplemented by these hobbies too. I still don’t really mind that he did this so much I just wish he could have thought about spending some time with his kids in the way he seemed to love spending time with boats and packs and guns.

My husband could lie on the couch sleeping while I cooked and a baby cried. I couldn’t leave the children with him and expect they would be fed – to this day if they are going somewhere with him you will see them dive to the kitchen and eat before they go because they expect they will be hungry otherwise. He was a completely unreliable babysitter. I could never commit to going anywhere unless I asked my mum or a babysitter to look after the kids. So: I hardly ever went anywhere. I became the person other people leave their kids with.

When we split he asked for shared care and I said YES! If we had had anything approaching this in our relationship we may not have split. You can have them as much as you like, I said. What he likes so far is every second weekend. He picks them up late – he drops them back early.

However: You have no idea how improved my life is now I can book a hair appointment, walk his dog, stroll at my own pace through a gallery, sit down and blog or write, and spend the morning reading the Saturday paper uninterrupted. It is such a privilege to have that freedom after the prison my life became.

I want to be fair Kim – I need to tell you the house close by he shifted to has needed work so its habitable for the kids. That is why we are ‘working towards’ shared care. But I’m also aware he never calls the kids. He was looking after them for 2 hours on Thursday nights at first but he does a sport – did I mention this? And he decided to do that 4 nights a week so gave up seeing them weekly.

I have hopes and fears about shared care. I guess I will blog about them in another entry. You made some other excellent points Kim and I hope I will be able to get around to commenting on them. Right now I brought work home and I need to look at it. I have a date with my electric blanket and some rather boring papers.

It says here husbands create 7 extra hours of housework per week: http://stuff.co.nz:80/4466752a19716.html I believe it. All my friends comment on how together my house seems since my husband went and the weird thing is: I do far less housework.  

The term single parent family kinda sounds like a family where the kids only have one parent. But – in my kids case they definitely have two and maybe three. For a start there’s me – and then there’s my Mum.

I think ‘parenting’ is the thing you do when you have an ongoing interest in a child’s well-being and development. It’s nurturing in the now and for the future. My Mum and I both do this.   

My Mum is unbelievable. She’s not only a great parent to my kids but she’s also an unwavering support to me. On Thursdays she picks up my kids from school and takes them to drama lessons, then she feeds them and gets them showered and has them overnight. On Friday she takes them to swimming. In this way I manage to work two long days in the week and can work shorter days the rest of the time to be there after school for them.

Mum thinks about what the kids are learning – like how to lose a game of chess and still enjoy it, like how to share, and how to shampoo your hair in the shower. Mum suggests vitamins to ward off colds. She bakes for lunch boxes, she springs for ballet costumes.

I’ve been really slow to grow up but one thing I have realised is that I’m very seldom a unique case. I’m know I’m a lucky single parent but I expect some other single-parent family kids have non-residential parents like mine do.

My kids also spend regular time with their Dad. I wouldn’t exactly call him a parent – not by the definition I’ve coming up with above, but there is no doubt he cares about the kids and to a kid having someone around who says he loves them is often just as good as a real parent – as long as there is an actual parent around too. We are planning to transition to shared parenting (meaning equal time) and I think this will mean he will become more of a parent.

The term single parent often evokes sympathy from people. I have found this a little ironic. The sympathy part is because they assume you are slogging it out on your own. Managing on your own. Doing all the grown up jobs. My experience is that when I was in a relationship I was doing far more slogging and managing on my own. Then, people assumed I had help. Fair call. I used to go down to our local play park on Saturday or Sunday mornings and be the lone mum there is a sea of Dads. Maybe half of them were having weekend access but the other half, I was pretty sure, were giving Mummy a lie in.

Hmm another part of the definition of a parent is someone who helps the other parent.

Then another thing people think about when they think ‘single parent’ is that you are , well, single. While that’s true right now I have been thinking that if it were not true in the future it still wouldn’t necessarily mean an additional parent in the mix. I kind of know about this in advance because I am a wicked stepmother to my 19 year old step son. I know it’s a relationship you don’t get of right and that even if there is some sort of agreement between the potential parenter and parented there is not necessarily any recognition of this from their existing parents. So: it’s complicated, complex and convoluted.

I will let you know how it works out.

I got the washing machine and dryer and he got the iron and ironing board.  He got the boat and I got the leather lounge suite.  Automatic washing machines are really underrated in human progress. People celebrate man (sic) walking on the moon, they know who invented the phone (Bell) and they are always coming out with new and better TVs. But really without washing machines we’d have no extra time and/or stink. My current washing machine has gone 6 years without problems. That boat on the other hand has been like a second tax department since the day it was bought. Another woman would have been cheaper. Seven months without an iron hasn’t had much impact on me. I’m not putting the ironing board away and avoiding the cord on Sunday night. And I’m not wearing those three shirts I have that you really need to iron to wear. Ironing is an oppressive pastime if not invented by the Victorians then certainly promoted by them in order to visually reinforce class distinctions. Well – that’s my theory. The washing machine though – that’s the tool of liberation.