Ponytail

On a previous weekend, I took MiniMac to the park. My seat on a picnic bench provided a perfect view of him flitting from swing to slide and back. At the end of the bench, a man also sat. Sporty and tall, his U of Georgia t-shirt caught MiniMac's attention as they quickly made friends. The whole time our son telling him about the game day chant and the recent UGA spring game. As MiniMac ran off, a little girl, approximately MiniMac's age, ran over to him.

"Daddy, can you fix my ponytail?"

"Sure," he said and turned her around to adjust the sprig of hair with a tiny boing at the nape of her neck.  As he adjusted it, she reached back to feel it. 

"You're doing it wrong, Daddy. Do it like Mommy does." He attempts to pull it tight through the tiny band bedecked with a little flower, yet it is no better off than the first time he tried. 

"Is Mommy coming back?" she asked.

"No, honey," he answers. As he does I felt a little shift and static in my heart. 

"Do you remember where I told you Mommy went?" he asks in a tone that I recognize as being pleasant but manufactured as such.

"Yeah," she says more matter of factly. "Heaven."

He is sitting less than two feet away from me but I feel like an intruder in a very private conversation. I don't look toward him as his daughter goes running along after his "go play with your sister" suggestion. 

The daily sounds of the park consume the air and he then says to me, "I am not so good with the ponytails."  His statement had less to do with ponytails than the fact I just heard this man ask his toddler if she remembered her Mom is in heaven. His voice seemed to hold two sounds in tandem: Yes, I can do this. But how in the _____ did I get here.

I look at him. He might be 35. He clearly has two young daughters. And I say, "Yet."

He looks back at me and I say again, "You are not so good with the ponytails, yet." He gives an uneasy nod. And I say, "Remember the first few times you played frisbee? Or basketball? You are probably much better at it now." He gave a chuckle that sounded a bit like his whole laugh track was dusty and neglected.

Our Mom was a single parent at one point in her life. Her segueway from work to home rarely included, "How was your day, Mom?" And more often included a barrage of: Where is/are my cleats/skis/shinguards/tennis racket/legwarmers/Blondie cassette? And we are lucky that in between running us to every event and activity, my Mom didn't add a new weekly activity:
Every Saturday morning at 10 am, beatings for the children of this house.

I know the weight and magnitude of raising a child and I don't know what that would be like on double time, as a single parent, whether by choice, by accident, or by default.  And this man, likely capable of successfully achieving a litany of milestones, made me take notice not because he could not put a 3 year old's hair in a ponytail, but because he, even more so than this tiny sprite bouncing around his legs, wanted to do it exactly how Mommy did it.

I am a person who occasionally is moved enough to want to hug a stranger and this was one of those moments. Not because he needed it, not because I related some profound wisdom, but because I think the circumstances would be a bit overwhelming at times if I wore them as my own.

And it is a reminder that sometimes a ponytail is symbolic of something so much greater.

And because I never realized for my own Mom the task at hand when you are a single parent, so thank you. And yours was a job well-done. Sometimes she made it look rather easy. Maybe that is the trick, or the strength, or the stamina single parents have to master.

And my apologies when we were young and fully absorbed in soccer games, singing Our Lips Are Sealed, or saying, "We are not having meatloaf AGAIN are we?" that we did not inquire more frequently How was your day, Mom?