I have such an incredible bond with my daughter and I’m so thankful for that. Hailey even tells people that I am her best friend. I feel like we can talk about anything and we have had some pretty awkward conversations so that must be true.
Is this the price I paid for being a single parent? Because if it is, I’ll gladly take it. Having never been the parent of a child raised in an intact family I don’t know if we would be this close if I hadn’t gotten divorced. Maybe we would have, maybe this bond is just part of our personalities and would have happened no matter what.
Or maybe it’s all those years it was just the two of us. We spent a lot of time together, time that was not shared with anyone else. We worked through things, just the two of us. From moving to grocery shopping to being without a car, we figured it out together.
I always tried not to depend on Hailey or treat her too much like an adult, I wanted her to enjoy her childhood. There were times though that she was more of a comfort than she’ll ever know.
My daughter has held my hand when I had surgery, something a 13 year old shouldn’t have to do for her mother but I didn’t have a spouse so I had to be honest with Hailey. I explained what the problem was, why I was having the surgery and the possible outcomes. I down played the really bad parts but I felt like she needed to know. It was just us, what if something happened and I hadn’t prepared her for it.
I love that we are so close. One look at my daughter’s smile tells me that all of those dire predictions the experts made about children raised in single parent homes are wrong. My daughter does not do drugs or run with a bad crowd. She did not drop out of school. Hailey is a wonderful human being who is an asset to society. I’m glad that we can now be friends. And I just love that she still wants to hold my hand.