solo parenting - summer holiday edition

I've just dropped The Bean and Boo off with Dad, after three weeks summer holidays with them (minus one weekend). It is quiet in the house. Sweltering, sunny, and silent. 

This is Summer #2 as a solo parent with the kids. This year, we started out our holidays with a week at a rented cottage with Aunty K (one of my dearest friends) and her new puppy. It was a relief to have K's company. The kids love her, she's lots of fun, and there was another adult to talk to in the evenings. K had to leave a day early, so I had one night and a full day alone with the girls. 

As I tucked them into bed that night, it occurred to me that I was alone. In the middle of nowhere, relatively speaking, and the only one responsible for them. I suddenly felt very vulnerable. What if something were to happen to me? What if I had an aneurism? What would happen to the girls? I've never really thought about it before, but it occurred to me again just last night, as I leaned over my precarious basement stairs and almost slipped. If I were to fall down the stairs while they are asleep, and hit my head and died, they would be the ones to find me. And that only after they got up, called out for me and started a search that would become more and more frantic.

I've also started wondering what would happen to them if I became gravely ill. Of course, they have their dad to take care of them, but how often would I see them? If I didn't have the energy to care for them, I would have to relinquish our shared custody arrangement. I would barely see them. I would barely be a mom anymore.

Now, I'm not a hypochondriac by nature, so I feel silly even thinking those things, but they cross my mind more and more. I realise that I had taken so much for granted in a two-parent household. I also realise that I have it pretty good, because I do have a co-parent, one I'm lucky to get along moderately well, especially in the parenting realm. I am not a single parent: if something happens to me, I know that they are well cared for by another parent who loves them as much as I do.

Being a divorced parent with shared custody is a strange world. The time I spend with the kids is intense given the very nature of me being alone with them. But then I spend long periods of time (one week on, one week off) without them. It's a rhythm that I'd started getting used to. Summer throws a monkey wrench into everyone's schedule, and mine is no exception. The Bean and Boo will be with Dad for the next three weeks. I'll see them for a weekend in there. Doesn't seem like nearly enough.