‘Mather’.

That’s what The Trolls call me.

Not all the time, of course. Most of the time they call me ‘Mom’, ‘Moms’, ‘Mom-a-saur’ or ‘Mama-bear’. These are the happy times. The times our lives are sprinkled by fairy dust, we have a little extra cash to spend on ourselves, when I make their favourite meal for dinner or when they wake up with lots of love in their hearts for their mama.

But sometimes…sometimes… They call me ‘Mather’.

‘Mather’, as a means of explanation, is their combination word for Mother and Father, and I’ve learned it is a term which my teenage boys use either complimentarily or obnoxiously, depending on the occasion.

I’m a ‘Mather’, like most single moms, because I play the role of both mom and dad simultaneously. As a single parent, the only real, true job description is ‘whatever they need’. Whether it’s soft, nurturing and caring or whether it’s strong, heavy duty and disciplined. If they need it, you provide it. It doesn’t come naturally of course, but practice makes perfect, and this role I might add, I’ve pretty much perfected over the years.

Perhaps a little too perfectly.

And perhaps, if I’m being completely honest, sometimes I lean into the dad role more than the mom.

I can’t help it. I’m raising boys. Two incredibly tall, incredibly strong (and strong willed!) man-children. They outnumber and out-tower me, and when you’re a short girl (I clock in at only 1,58m) and find yourself having to look up into their nostrils when you scold them, sometimes you have to power-play. And my go-to power move is “I’m the man of this house, I do the providing and protecting and my word is law”.

And so I ‘Mather’.

I ‘Mather’ when I get up and switch the TV off in the middle of their favourite movie because they spend too much time watching television and too little time doing their school work. I ‘Mather’ when I deduct money from their monthly allowance – N$10 for every time they didn’t take out the trash on trash day, made the dirty dishes brew overnight or didn’t clean their rooms. I ‘Mather’ when I confiscate their phones because they answered me side-ways or back-chatted when I take them to task. And I ‘Mather’ when I refuse any friends over because I caught them lying to me.

The one day I overheard Troll 1 tell his baby brother, “I can’t believe you failed your German test. If you show mom that now, you’re gonna unleash the kraken. The mather kraken!”

It’s not all bad lieutenant at the army boot camp though. Sometimes that ‘Mather’ they throw at me is super cool and super complimentary. Like the time Troll 2 got bullied at school and the bully’s dad and I squared off in the principal’s office and Troll 2 came home later that day and told his brother, “Dude! You should have seen mom! She ‘mathered’ the crap out of that guy!”

I …the Urban Single Mom, ‘Mather’.

Because boys need rules. Because boys need discipline. And because when I realised that God gave me not one but two men to raise, alone, I decided that I would mould them into the type of men… I wasn’t lucky enough to meet growing up.

Till next time.

urbansinglemom@gmail.com

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