I left my daughter’s karate class recently in tears.
You know, how you cry sometimes and try not to let anyone around you know you’re doing it, trying to smile through the pain?
The reason had absolutely nothing to do with why we were there. My tears came from the look in my daughter’s eyes that day.
It was testing day for another little girl in class. Her dad walked in carrying a single red rose. Oh, I thought, how sweet, he’s bringing his wife a rose after a hard days work. Must be nice, for her, my thoughts laced with just a tad bit of jealousy since I can’t recall the last time I got flowers from a man.
That very moment his daughter forgot she was in class and took off to his arms. “Daddyyyyy,” she cooed.
I smiled. It was a sweet moment. That is, until I saw the look in my little girl’s eyes. She was staring hard, expressionless, mouth open and all.
It’s been a rough few weeks since this karate class started.
Someone must have forgotten to give me the memo that dads take their daughters to karate at the Y. The room has been filled with couples or dads each week. I’m usually the only solo mother.
And, if I’m being honest, I hate it. Not for me, but for my little one.
I’ve got single mama blues over it y’all. Being a single mom comes with all kinds of tough moments, but perhaps none is as hard to overcome as the blues. Don’t get me wrong, I know mothering is hard single or married. But at this moment I’m raising my favorite wine glass to toast single mamas.
In recent weeks my daughter has cried, “I want my daddy.”
In my head I’m thinking, yeah we don’t have one of those. Sometimes I blow it off and say, "OK, we’ll call Pop Pop (that’s what she calls her grandfather.)" When she’s not satisfied with that, she whines, “No, not Pop Pop, my daddy.”
Pop Pop believes she says this only because she’s heard other little kids saying it at school. OK, I’m sure he’s right, but it certainly doesn’t make it any less frustrating or, at times, heartbreaking.
On more than one occasion my daughter has asked a man, even a stranger, if he were her father. Most times it’s embarrassing. I apologize before the man says something stupid.
Heading into school one day she said out of the blue, “Everybody has a daddy except me, right, Mommy? I don’t have a daddy.”
It wasn’t the time or the place for this discussion again. It never is really. Not for me anyway.
It’s never the right time it seems, because it happens all the time.
On her last play date with a friend from school, the mother and father showed up to meet us at the park. “Look, Mommy; it’s her daddy,” my little one said. “He’s going to be my pretend daddy today, too.”
And then there was a recent trip to the zoo where she asked a stranger to pick her up over his head like he had done another little girl.
Karate class has sent me over the edge.
There hasn’t been a karate class yet where my daughter doesn’t stop and stare into a man’s eyes in the room, smiling until he finally waves hello.
Ugh! It’s not like I can yell, "Stop staring at that man!"
After class on what I’ll now refer to as “rose” day, the little girl who tested proudly earned her yellow belt after breaking a wood board with her foot.
That rose, it was for his little girl.
My daughter was putting on her shoes, ignorant to the fact that she had forgotten her socks and was putting a shoe on the wrong foot.
Her eyes were fixed on this dad and his little girl and that rose.
I’m crying again now as I think about that look in her eyes.
I leaned over and kissed my little girl on the cheek and stood up and wiped my own eyes.
If you know a single mother, show a little empathy. I know she needs it, because I know I need it. Single mothers do it all by themselves.
And don’t make assumptions. You never know why someone has chosen to be a Super Single Mom. Maybe it wasn’t their choice.
I live in Atlanta. My family lives in Virginia. My village in Atlanta is intentionally small. And I have to be careful about dating and about who I let into my daughter’s life. I only want a man in my life who is accepting and open to treating my daughter as though his blood runs through her. A man who will show her unconditional love. It has to be a man who knows to simply hug her if she asks, "Are you my father?" I don’t want her heart broken before she knows what heartbreak really, truly is.
I want a man in her life who will bring her a rose to karate class.
I don’t want to leave out single fathers. They do it alone, too, but that’s not my experience to tell. Whether it’s a single mother or single father, we’ve all had our rose moments, and they hurt.
That’s my story.
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