#94. Where’s Your Husband?

“Is your husband coming?”  “Who did you marry?”  These questions or variations thereof have been asked throughout my tenure as a single mom for the past twelve years.  It’s bad enough when you are a single woman over a certain age as relatives and work colleagues wonder if you are somehow defective or a Lesbian.  But when you have a baby or child and you are unmarried the entire world seems to treat you like either a miserable failure or an unstable, disposable ho-bag.  Or both.

The first time I was confronted with the question of a husband as a single mom was when my son was about thirteen months old and I took him to Gymboree on a Saturday morning at the local mall.  The room was full of women boasting about their husband’s lucrative professions while their toddlers ran through a cloud of bubbles.  When one woman asked me what my husband did, I quickly replied, “He has sex with other women.”  That shut them up.

For a while I preferred to entertain myself with other people’s stunned reactions to avoid my own discomfort on the topic of my husband or lack-thereof.  I kept coming up with more and more shocking responses, like:

CURIOUS PERSON #1: “What’s your husband’s name?”

ME:                    “Shirley.”

CURIOUS PERSON #2: “Will your husband be joining us today?”

ME:                  “Not unless there’s an open bar and random sex on the agenda.”

CURIOUS PERSON #3: “Where is your husband?”

ME:                  “In Mexico where I killed him and hid the body.”

But I had to devise some succinct, stock answer, as the question would ultimately continue to arise at schools, parties, events, etc.  What kind of answer could I give to explain something that I wasn’t quite clear on and would be a dignified and empowering response for my son? Since I sadly had a grandmother with Altzheimer’s, I had lots of practice fine tuning the explanation of my marital status.  My grandmother, (who I lovingly called “Bubby”), would always, and I mean at every visit, repeatedly ask me the same question.  The following is a transcript from one such conversation:

Bubby:  “Hayley, where’s your husband?”

Me:     “We have decided to split up.  We just had very different expectations about marriage that were completely incompatible.”

Bubby:  “Was he Jewish?”

Me:      “No.”

Bubby:  “Oh…” (Like him not being Jewish explained why the marriage failed.)

Two minutes later:

Bubby:  “Hayley, is your husband here?”

Me:      “No Bubby.  Our marriage didn’t work out. I felt that it was better for our son to not be stuck in a miserable, high conflict environment. I don’t think my husband will be visiting you anymore.  ”

Bubby:  “Was he Jewish?”

Me:      “No.”

Bubby:  “Oh…” (Like him not being Jewish explained why the marriage failed.)

One minute later:

Bubby:  “Hayley, is your husband here today?”

Me:      “Nope. He joined the French Foreign Legion.  He won’t be returning.”

Bubby:  “Was he Jewish?”

Me:      “No.”

Bubby:  “Oh…” (Like him not being Jewish explained why the marriage failed.)

Thirty Seconds later:

Bubby:   “Hayley, where is the father of your son?”

Me:      “We’re divorced”

Bubby:   “Was he Jewish?”

Me:      “No.”

Bubby:   “Oh…” (Like him not being Jewish explained why the marriage failed.)

Ding ding ding!  And I found a winner!  “We’re divorced” was all I had to say.  And since then, keeping it short and simple seems to be the easiest response to the “Where’s your husband” question.  That’s not to say that colourful responses don’t flow through my head every single time I am confronted with questions about my marital status, but I try to keep those comments from flying out of my mouth.  When there is a school function or any other type of social gathering, I find that less is more.  Just the facts ma’am, just the facts.  In fact, I just used the dignified “We’re divorced” yesterday at a meeting with a prospective High School for my son to attend next year.  I was very proud of myself.  I sounded very mature and stable.  (Sure fooled them…)