Soliloquy of a Single Mother

Soliloquy of a Single Mother

I am single, so I’m not qualified to raise you. But I do:

I mix dry ingredients with wet,

• 1C White Rice Flour
• 1t Apple Cider Vinegar

Then I forget the egg whites, distracted by a phone call from the Pediatric Dentist
who needs your Alberta Child Health Benefit Plan number
that I actually haven’t renewed.
Perhaps the waste can needs a Gluten-free diet like you.

I also bring home the Bacon,
via my paper on Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes,
via Scholarships and Student loans,
via paperwork and phone-calls Monday morning at 10
instead of teaching you to sort your blocks by colour.
Perhaps the blocks would be offended if we distinguished them by colour anyways,
they are all the same on the inside, like me and you.

I also dress you in your Sunday best and bring you to Church
where you scream for Grandpa during sacrament, spill pink juice on your lace dress,
and later (at home)  your slippery tights cause a head-on collision with the laminate flooring. Perhaps the tooth-fairy was unemployed during the recession, like many others.

I also leave you one night a week,
practically unattended so I can catch a night class
under the pretense that my 14 year old brother could handle an emergency
better than he can handle a dirty diaper,
hoping one night raised on Handy Manny and Tracteur Tom will not deprive you of creativity
or rob you of bonding
hoping I can still wake up with you at midnight
if you chance leg cramps or nightmares or thunderstorms
so when the lights are out and I trip across the folded laundry on my way to your room I can still appreciate the stars that shine on only our street, and the beautiful face that longs for only mine, and the second and third hug before feeling my way back to a single bed I hope to fill.
At least I may teach you to hope.