Taking Flight

“I’m hungry!”

I groaned and placed my face in my hands, needing to look away from the work I still had to do and the screaming three year old by my side for just a few seconds. However, before I even had time to get my thoughts together, I felt a tiny hand nudge my leg.

“Mommy?”

I removed my hands from my face and looked down. “I know, Molly, you’re hungry. And I promise we’re gonna have lunch really soon, okay? But I have some more work to do that’s really important and I have to get it done. Do you want to sit with me while I do it?”

She nodded, and I helped her up when she began crawling into my lap. I gave her the cup of juice she left on my desk, and she stuck it in her mouth and was silenced temporarily. I tried to focus on my computer screen, knowing that I had a serious deadline that I was going to miss if I didn’t hurry.

This was pretty much a daily occurrence, although sometimes I didn’t have as much work to do and sometimes Molly wasn’t as whiny. I didn’t really have much to complain about, considering I had a work from home data entry job and could spend time with my daughter without having to deal with babysitters or day care. Still, raising a kid alone wasn’t easy.

That was something I hated to admit. When I found out I was pregnant at seventeen years old, I fought with my parents constantly, telling them that I would have no problem being a parent. It took me less than twenty four hours to realize I’d been completely incorrect about this.

Molly’s dad Tyler and I broke up before she was even a month old. We both made excuses for it at the time, but it all really came down to one thing.
We were too young.

Tyler was supposed to have visitations with Molly every other weekend, but ever since he’d gotten that right, he’d only taken a handful of them. It was really frustrating to me, not because I wanted a free weekend or anything, but because I sincerely believed that it wasn’t fair to my daughter. But I couldn’t make Tyler’s decisions for him, and if he didn’t want to see her there was really nothing I could do about it. I tried to have a positive attitude about it because when he flaked out it meant I got to spend more time with Molly, and weekends were always great with her because I didn’t have to worry about work.

Molly whined as she finished her juice and leaned forward to place her cup back on the desk. She started squirming and once again informed me of how hungry she was. I tried to shush her and gave her some toys to play with because I was so close to being finished that it was painful, but she wasn’t having it. Finally, I put her back on the floor.

“Go put your shoes on and we’ll leave,” I said, knowing that it would take her a few minutes to do this. As soon as she started running to her room, I started typing as quickly as possible, praying that I could finish before she came back. I was starting to believe it was going to be impossible to get done, but then all of a sudden I was finished. I hit ‘submit’ right as she ran back around the corner.

“Okay, let’s go,” I said as I began gathering up all of our things and putting them in a bag. I slung the bag over my shoulder and placed Molly on my hip before heading out the door.