This year will mark my second Festive Season as a Single Mom. And I’d kind of rather wade into a teeming cesspool of leaches with cement blocks on my feet than hang out without my three-year-old sidekick on Thanksgiving and Christmas — but it looks like that’s exactly what I’ll be doing.

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My friend emailed me late one night this week, an update email about his kids, his work, and what was stewing in his head. He’s a fairly newly divorced dad, with a 7 year old son and a 3 year old daughter. His ex-wife and the kids live about six hours away by car.

It’s a situation he was amenable to at first: she was offered a great career opportunity in her old home town; her family was there and he could have the kids on weekends and for stretches of time over the holidays.

“But I miss the kids so much,” he wrote,”I want her to move back here, or at least halfway. And I want to ask for joint custody.” I could almost feel the pause in his missive: a friendship between a single Mom and a single Dad is rife with opportunity for misunderstanding merely on the general perspective of the sexes.

“What would you do,”he wrote,”If your ex asked for joint custody of your son?”

I drew in a breath and wrote back right away.

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While seated solo at the bar at a busy restaurant at LAX last week, picking at a cold quesadilla and organizing folders on my laptop, I met a young business man.

“Where are you headed?” he asked when I lifted my laptop bag to make room for him next to me, the only empty stool in the room.

“Going home,”I said, stretching my arms and feeling my shoulder prick with the aftermath of terrifying GPS-led navigation on LA’s infamous freeways,”Just here for the day for meetings.”

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When I was contemplating the ramifications of separation from the Father of my son, I sought wisdom from my two best girlfriends. One of them, Shelly*, is a child of a nasty divorce. Her Mother left her Father when she was not quite three, and moved her and her older sister across the country to be closer to her own immediate family. She rarely saw her Father growing up.

“Do you resent your Mom?” I asked, stomach sinking,”For moving away from your Dad, I mean.”

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We’re a team of routine, my son and I. We like to know what to expect and during this past year and a half of Just Us Two, we’ve set about implementing comforting repetitive motions to our days.

Saturday mornings we amble through the forest to the rocky beach to throw pebbles, Sunday we stop for pancakes after soccer. Bedtime is at 7:30, and we read two books, not three, and he leaps into my arms for a final hug.

“You’re getting so big!” I tell him each night.

“You can barely lift me!” he replies, grinning, and I kiss his smooth cheek. He reciprocates with a fish-kiss somewhere between my ear and my eyeball.

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“So - while I’ve got you on the phone I’m hoping we can schedule time to talk about our parenting agreement.”

I hold my breath and look up and wonder who decided that divot-filled, cottage cheese ceilings were mandatory in the 1970’s.

He’s silent and so I cover the air with scrambling, futile attempts to sound sunny.  Instead I sound like someone has grabbed a human-remote and is starting me, pausing me, stalling and punching me.

“I mean, the in-place agreement has changed, since you’ll be moving here, and we should - well, just so we have proper expectations and Nolan has a routine….” I trail off and hate myself for my meekness when I speak to him, for the guilt I still hold for making a necessary move to save my sanity, my good Motherhood.

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Nataly drew my attention to an intriguing article last night, about women who have made the decision to have children solo.

It seems like it’s a bit of a trend: 30-something, successful and independent women who have everything: a home, a stable career, a joie de vivre and a need to share it. They have everything, that is, except a man and a child. And they’re increasingly deciding that they don’t need the man to have the child.

I read the article with great interest: I have several friends in their early thirties who are navigating this perplexing road now. They are still young but experienced in dating, jaded enough to know that their chances of finding Mr. Right are diminishing daily. Their bodies are still young enough to conceive fairly easily, but there’s not that much time. It’s a critical, life-altering decision. Should they make the decision to bear and raise a child alone? It’s a question with a very personal answer. But — and this may get me in trouble — if I were asked my opinion, as a woman raising a child solo, I would say: don’t do it.

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There’s a suite for rent on a hilly, forested street in a nearby neighborhood. It’s within budget, all utilities included. Slightly belligerent but exquisitely charismatic rescue dogs are not only tolerated, but encouraged. The landlords are dog people, this is good, I can feel it.

I make an appointment for a viewing at 4:30 the next day.

“I have a few people coming,”the landlord warns me.

“That’s OK,” I reply,”I just think this might be perfect, I’d really love to see it.

I walk up the steps to a looming house, all grey-and-glass and jutting West Coast architecture. Nolan grips my finger, tiny and spry in his green monkey t-shirt, and I watch the landlord regard us from the front step, an “O” forming on his mouth.

“I’m not looking for me,”I explain quickly,”And not for my son. It would just be a man living here — 31 years old, a tradesman, an avid mountain biker, pretty quiet. And my dog — well, his dog now. An awesome rescue dog, he’ll capture your heart.”

He doesn’t say anything and I draw a breath,”I’m looking on behalf of my ex,”I say,”For my son’s father.

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My friend Mel sat across from me at the neighborhood pub, a sigh painting her pretty face weary.  A sparkling carafe of purple sangria sat between us on the chipped wooden table, lemon slices and ice cubes bobbing invitingly at the surface.  I looked up and watched pub patrons ambling at the pool table, poised with their darts, stroking their beer mugs beside them.  Husbands, I thought, husbands and boyfriends and sons.

“I do blame his Mom, for 80% of his laziness at least,”my friend sighed, cocked her eyebrow at me and held the carafe over my empty glass.  I nodded.

“If she hadn’t spoiled him, done his laundry, paid his bills and bought his damned toothbrushes, he wouldn’t be so completely lazy,” she finished,”He is 29 and has no idea how to do laundry.  I’m serious.”

I nodded again, and shuddered too.

I could relate.  99.9% of my friends could relate, in fact: whether they were married or simply in a serious relationship.  So many of our men expected us to cook and clean and work and caretake — simply because their own Mothers had done it all.  They knew nothing else, we guessed.  But that didn’t make it any less annoying.

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The crushing pain of the dissolution of a family unit is one of life’s inexplicable mysteries. I don’t think it can be fathomed until experienced first-hand: like labor, like the vice-grip horror of the loss of hope. It’s a death, of sorts: of a family unit, of hope, of the purity of those moments in the hospital with a first born child when you couldn’t imagine anything but the eternity of your overwhelming, deep love. Your little family unit, together forever.

It took me well over a year to be able to get through the day without physically mourning the loss of my son’s father in my daily life. I didn’t let the tears flow in front of my son, or my immediate family who had supported me so unflinchingly during some very heavy days. But at night, when my head hit the pillow in the silence of the night, memories infiltrated and I let tears drop silently, unnoticed, until my pillow was soaked through to the the side. I was pretty sure my heart would never heal.

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