A Single Mother on Welfare
We lived in a small city in southeastern Ontario for a couple of years before moving to Ottawa. While there, I made friends with Jen, a mother of one when I met her, two when I left, who had married her middle school sweetheart. I'd met her at a Tuesday morning drop-in in a United Church basement, a drop-in made all the more welcoming because volunteers looked after our babies and toddlers for us while we hung out for some mother time - during which we talked about our babies and toddlers.
Jen was a very straightlaced, conservative woman from the very city we were in, but who had spent her adult life living and working in Toronto, managing a popular retail store in the Eaton Center. We were friends for the same reason all mothers-at-home are friends - we were friends in need. It's a sad fact of modern life, but no one but another stay-at-home mother really wants to hang out with a stay-at-home mother. It's sort of like how it is for retired teachers who want to travel - only other retired teachers will travel with them because, well, they're retired teachers, too.
Every Tuesday, no matter what (seriously - no matter what) I'd head off to the drop-in with my two little girls. It was a must do because I'd become slightly agoraphobic (I realize now I was probably a little depressed - stay-at-home motherhood is socially isolating at a time when you really need to have adult conversation) and knew I needed to make the effort to go out every day or I'd turn into my Grandmother, who never left our house after coming to live with us in 1965. I remember particularly, one Tuesday morning, trying to shove my youngest into her snowsuit (she would go alternately stiff and limp) while her sister hung about staring at the floor.
"What's wrong? C'mon - we've got to get going!" Then I noticed tears rolling down her cheeks.
"You're going to die and there's nothing I can do about it", she said, sadly.
I'll admit, I was kind of stunned at the time that I was being told this by a toddler, but she has proven herself to be a fairly profound individual, so I'm not surprised now.
"Oh, you don't know that. Now, c'mon. We've got to get to the drop-in."
I know - add another one to the pile of mother lies. Somewhere out there is an entire universe constructed of mother lies.
Anyway, Jen was also a regular. She wasn't depressed because she loved being a stay-at-home mother, was made for it in fact. I can't tell you the number of play dates she arranged that I never reciprocated unless she just showed up - not to mention the evening get togethers she hosted that I could never have managed myself - or with the help of Martha Stewart, for that matter. Politically, we were polar opposites. I had worked at the NDP Caucus at Queen's Park, she was a Conservative through and through to the 50s. Her husband was the same (mine was a Liberal but only because Conservatives were religious and he couldn't abide the thought that some of them believed dinosaurs and humans co-existed), a Conservative and a straight arrow. He was even - a cop.
So we became friends in need, then friends. She was a very dedicated mother, too. She had been desperate to have a baby after years of trying and when she finally became pregnant, it was a difficult pregnancy that involved lying in bed for three months. Her decision to do it all again was based on the selfless notion that her son should have a sibling, something I thought was pretty brave, given the difficult first go 'round.
She managed to stay out of hospital with the second baby, though, and he was born a premature eight pounds. I'd already had my son, so we were hanging out with newborns while my girls and her older son played in the nursery/basement of her suburban (imagine - suburbs even in a small southeastern Ontario city) house with two-car garage and beautifully landscaped backyard complete with a massive playstructure and above ground pool.
So there we were one day when she broke the news that earlier that morning she had accidentally opened a package intended for her husband. Inside, was a video tape and a letter. The letter was from her best friend, co-signed by her best friends husband. The video tape was of her husband having sex with her best friend while her best friend's husband filmed it all and gave handy directions on angles, etc, while pretty obviously masturbating.
"We're bored with this tape and think it's time to make a new one", the letter stated.
And it was signed and sealed with: "XOX + XOX = XXX".
I was stunned. I mean, I'd kind of wondered about her husband, but I'd never wondered if he was having sex with her best friend and her best friend's husband. I'd kind of thought he was, well, just more into Jesus than he was into sex. Then Jen said something I hadn't expected, either, "What am I? Chopped liver?" Which, I guess under the circumstances was a perfectly legitimate question. She was a good looking woman, afterall, and feeling like she'd not only just had the 100% Persian rug pulled out from under her perfectly appointed living room, but like she'd been the fourth uninvited wheel to the menage a trois. Or some such mixed metaphor. I was at a state in my own marriage where I might have welcomed the legitimate out a sex tape of my husband having sex with my best friend and her husband (who was 30 years older than my best friend, but that's another story) would have provided - but Jen certainly wasn't. She'd been a very happily married stay-at-home mother with no idea that her husband had been busily making sex tapes with other couples while she was making and freezing apple pies to last them through the winter. (It was one of her evening get togethers - Jen and I and another friend made thirty apple pies to split three ways.)
A long story short, the beautiful home was sold, and Jen and her ex each moved to apartments. The divorce was ugly, the verdict by the judge that there simply wasn't enough money to go around and Jen would have to get a job. Of course, she was living in a small city in southeastern Ontario which had just seen it's main industry close down. So, she became in her own words, her worst nightmare: "A single mother on welfare". Meanwhile, her ex managed to get fired from his job, so whatever money there had been, was gone. When he wanted to be friends and hang out, she told me she'd answered, "No".
"He'll get even with me for that one", she stated matter of factly, impressing me once again with her ability to face the truth like it was a particularly bitter pill that there was no point in not swallowing now while you had enough saliva left to get it down.
Oddly enough, that was when I really started to like her. She was so resilient. And every time we went over to visit, she'd done something else to the apartment until one day it was as if her apartment had been transformed into a suburban house - except with soul. That was the day I had to tell her we were moving, that my husband had a job in Ottawa. She took a deep breath and went into the bedroom. When she came back out she was holding a box of writing paper.
"Good idea", I said. "I'll write."
"No you won't", she replied. "But you'll think of me when you look at this box of unopened writing paper."
It's true. I've still got it. Unopened. Bottom dresser drawer.
