First and foremost, don’t get confused with the title. Of course, I am married. I still am, happily am. However, at this point since my husband is miles away from us, single parenting is a big challenge for me.
For over 26 years, I grew up without my dad around us. I am also a product of an OFW family who hoped high and struggled to sustain our needs. Several years later, I also found myself serving other nationals in a foreign land. The only difference was it was only my immediately family left back home waiting every 2 years for my come back.
Until lately, 3 years ago to be exact, I’ve seen myself in my mom’s shoes, this time my kids are a product of an OFW family, but please allow me to give it a slightly changed acronym, an Overseas Foreign Worker since my husband is not a Filipino National.
Everything is slowly sinking in to me. I meant, the struggles of single parenting. Again don’t get confused, there was no divorce or annulment happened. When I say single parenting here, I meant it literally.
There are times when I really wish my husband is around to share with me his parenting 101 tips. It doesn’t matter whether we have an opposite way of dealing temper tantrums. It doesn’t really matter whether I go out of the way in terms of his parenting strategies. It doesn’t matter whether it’s okay with him for our kids to eat sweets even before decent meals, and to me it’s not. It doesn’t matter whether wants become needs and needs are kept aside for a while. It doesn’t even matter whether our kids will vote for a hip hop clothing line over Barbie dresses. What matters is at least I know that somebody around will be willing to give his parenting shares. For now, that still remains a wish. I hope, in no time the title of this post is no more “single”.
