I’ve Been There- Single Parent Stories

We are sharing the stories of single parents, that all single parents will have a similar story to share. One of those stories that you have to laugh or you’ll cry at!

This week, Chris shares his story about one of the first times that he took his children to the beach as a single parent.

How about this time I took the kids to the beach with our buckets and spades.

As we were walking down this big concrete slope to the sea I remember convincing the kids that walking barefoot on sand was one of life’s great experiences. And they were on board!

Sadie was something like 5 years old at the time and fiercely independent, so needed to take her own shoes and socks off. It took her ages, which gave me the time to get me and the boys ready.

The exact second Sadie’s bare foot touched the sand she needed a wee, which should have meant all of us putting our shoes back on and walking back up that concrete slope. I decided that we wouldn’t bother wasting time with that and we’d make the walk back up the concrete slopey thing barefoot.

It turns out the concrete wasn’t quite as smooth as I hoped, so we were forced painfully and slowly walked all the way to the toilet. Sadie took her time independently having a wee, and then we painfully and slowly walked back to the beach to find the tide had come in and our shoes had been washed out to sea.

I was in the middle of wondering how one might drive a car barefoot when a load of scuba divers arrived. They were fully kitted up and dived straight out into the water - all except for a much younger one who seemed to hesitate a bit. Also at that moment I noticed what could have been our brightly coloured bucket the other side of the bay - I thought there might be a chance that our shoes might have floated along with it. I explained our situation to the young chap and asked if he fancied helping us - and off he went.

He soon returned with the bucket and four of our shoes. One for each of us. Perfect, I thought. My first trip as a lone parent and I’ve lost one of each of our shoes.

There was a happy ending though - the mini-scuber guy set off again and managed to find our matching set of shoes. It wasn’t all good news - we did lose our socks, but I was happy to take that on the chin.

Deciding this was quite enough adventure for one day, we abandoned the paddling idea, put our wet shoes on our sockless feet and squelched all the way home.

If you have a single parent that you would like featured then get in touch.