The life of a single mother cannot be easy, especially for the mother of a boy. She does not get to divide the unique stress of raising a son with an “other” parent. The burdens of football practice and bruised shoulders, bicycle wrecks and scraped knees are hers alone to shoulder. Boys tend to live in a world where tree-branches are sidewalks and sofa is another name for the outer wall of an impenetrable fortress. So I cannot fault my mother for latching onto whatever semblance of a routine that she could find in the topsy-turvy world her son created.
Every Sunday, after church, she took a sleeping pill and locked herself in her room for the afternoon to catch up on the sleep she had missed in the previous week. Once her bedroom door closed, she would not emerge again until Monday mornin
