D-Day

D-Day is this coming Sunday. I know this conjures images of war and devastation, death and destruction but it also means Daddy's Day - or so creche tells me. I don't want to be bitter and twisted, I don't want to be a nasty wench that wishes all other kids didn't create presents for their dads simply because my son's dad isn't around.

But I struggle with the notion that creating gifts for absent dads, or creating presents for present Papas that have the word 'Dad' all over it, is an educational tool in contemporary Western society. Where nearly 50% of marriages end in divorce and more and more kids are living in single parent families. I think that Mums and Dads deserve all sorts of presents all of the time, we are, unquestionably, wonderful people. However, it is the fact that I have to explain it when we get home to a house where there is no dad.

And I don't know what to say. Or how to make it better for him.

Because ultimately he is a boy. He craves a dad. He has been asking for quite a few months now where his dad is or why he's not here, and I can explain as best I can in age appropriate language but I can't make his dad appear. No matter how hard I try. How many emails I send. How much I suggest or plead or beg.

I can't change the fact that he's a boy and I'm a Mama of a boy, a slightly tom-boy-ish mama yes, but a girl nonetheless. I can go in the back yard and we can get completely covered in dirt and we can play cars at the beach and get completely covered in sand. I can watch racing cars. I can kick soccer balls. I can do all of the stereotypical 'masculine' activities but I can never be his dad, and in all honesty I'd really rather not. I really love being a Mama.

But I fear that he is lacking something.

And I fear his broken little heart every year when creche then kinder then school then friends then after-school television specials continually remind him that he doesn't have a dad in his life. And I fear that he will try and protect me from seeing that his little heart is broken. Because although potentially broken, that little heart is so kind and caring that he hates to see anyone else in pain. Even if the pain is a protective one. Of him.

Things The Bean has said:

Me: Guess how much I love you?
TB: Um...... Forty!
Me: hahaha, I love you forty?
TB: Yup, and I love you forty, too.