I am not someone who has lived my life according to plan. If someone had told me when I was that know-it-all seventeen-year-old that I would be a busy, happy, gritty single mom, I would have been horrified at the unglamorousness of it all. No, I had very definite plans–I was going to marry Richard Gere, have two children and be a powerful public relations agent in Hollywood. Then, I was going to retire and write the great novel of the 21st century. That was my plan, I have it written down in black and white (well, to be honest, it’s in rainbow ink on spiral notebook paper, but that’s just splitting hairs.) What I also did not anticipate, was that I would become quite handy with all manner of tools and needles, and be forced to learn how to patch, repair, untangle and construct just about anything and everything.
My daughter said it the other day as I was under the girls’ bathroom sink in my bathroom unplugging the drain, “There’s nothing you can’t fix, Mom.” Well, who would have thought?
You might think that single momhood brought about the fix-it skills, but that’s not really true. No, my dream of the glamourous life was dashed rather early and it was in my very young marriage (at the age of 19) that I realized the hard truth that not all men did plumbing, changed oil, built bookshelves, or really fixed much of anything at all. That’s okay, I thought, I’m a feminist, the library has books, I can buy tools. And, by default, I became Mrs./Ms. Fix-It.
As a matter of fact, I will confess that the most angering and heated “discussion” during my divorce was when my ex-husband wanted to take all the tools. I couldn’t believe he was insisting when he’d probably opened the lids on the tool boxes a total of a half-dozen times in sixteen years! That wasn’t the point, he said, many of those tools had been given to him. This was true. People tend to give men tools as gifts, never asking whether they even know the difference between a Philip’s head and a flathead screwdriver. I had been so nice about everything else, he couldn’t understand why I would get so hysterical over the tools. Fine, take the tools, I’ll get my own.
And I did. So, yes, mom can fix broken dolls and repair the dishwasher and build furniture. I haven’t yet tackled the wonderful world of electrical wiring. I’m also pretty good at fixing unsolvable problems, helping sort priorities and mending broken hearts (shhh…don’t tell them I’m only human…I haven’t figured out how to do this in my own life yet…Mom?)