Dear Mom at the Father’s Day event,
I don’t know you. I don’t know your circumstances. I don’t know if you’re divorced, separated, abandoned, widowed, praying for your partner to come home safely after months of deployment, or if you’re simply filling in for your husband who couldn’t get off work.
But for all that I don’t know about you, there’s one thing I know most certainly: you are a great mom.
Your baby (and no matter how old they are, I know they’re still your baby) asked you to go. Or they begged you to go. Or you simply found the flyer they brought home from school, tossed aside in resignation that they had nobody to take.
And you couldn’t bear to watch your child be excluded for a reason that was no fault of theirs. Because you knew.
You knew that they wanted to go, and you stepped up. You knew you’d feel out of place, but you went anyway. You knew you might get strange looks, but you ignored them. Your poise belied your discomfort; as the only woman amongst a sea of men, you stood proudly.
And so did your child.
Because they got to participate. Be included.
But mostly, because they knew you were standing there with them, being the person they know they can count on no matter what.
Even if it means being the only mom at a dad-focused event.
Your heart breaks a little when you think about it too much. You long for your sweet child to have the healthy father-son or father-daughter relationship that everyone talks about. But you know that certain things are out of your control.
Still, you also know which things aren’t out of your control, and you’re doing them.
Like standing alongside your child on Father’s Day.
Sweet mama, no matter what you grieve your child is missing today, I know that your child is blessed. Blessed, because you are their mama.
