Single Moms of South Pas: The Village and How I Found It

As a single mom, I believe that families come in all configurations. There isn’t a must-have, “one dad, one mom, 2.2 children,” one-size-fits-all. What is essential—and what is painful when absent—is “the village.” My village has been makeshift, fluid and that is what brought me to South Pasadena. 

I first came to South Pas for play dates and birthday parties when my son was very young. When I decided to buy a house, I fantasized about living near .  As a single mom, I could only hope to buy a condo there, and the reality was that even those were way out of my range. Instead, I found the least expensive house in the best neighborhood I could find—just like “they” advise—in what is now called the Washington Square Landmark District in Pasadena (“bungalow heaven adjacent”).

That house proved to be a good one for my son and me—despite the unexpected challenges of fleas, ants, termites, skunks and a contentious escrow.

After the succession of handymen stopped coming, my son began to ask when “the man” would come to fix things. One day I told him, “Damnit, there is no man—the man isn’t coming! It’s just you and me, and I’m going to do it!” With that, I climbed onto a chair and performed a complicated porch light repair. My son was impressed.

I realized that he doesn’t know that side of me who took woodshop and auto mechanics, who worked on a chainsaw crew with the Forest Service, and who was on the first all-woman backcountry trail crew in Sequoia and Kings Canyon. He only knows the me who occasionally expresses the desire to run away, but never does. At least he knows I’m here for keeps.

I used to belong to a Jewish youth group Habonim, which taught a brand of socialism at summer camp: “Give what you can, take what you need.” It put us all on a path to go live on a kibbutz.

I never quite lost my desire to live in some kind of shared community housing. For years my son and I went to Co-Op Camp in the Sierra National Forest—a real haven for “co-opish” parents of all types where kids ran in packs and adults could hike, read, talk, hold “family happy hours” and not have to cook.

After a series of unfortunate blended and unblended family circumstances and a drastic drop in the housing market, I found myself a single mom again.

In addition to my 13-year-old son, I had a 13-year-old stepdaughter with whom I struggled to maintain contact. I rented out my starter house. And “the big house” that I’d poured our equity into was no longer ours to share—collateral damage of a failed marriage.  

Check back tomorrow to hear more on Sameth's journey to South Pasadena.