It's fine! I understand being new and curious--it just means I should probably invest in doing a character-specific Q&A on my website to streamline folk's understanding of the characters lol.

TL;DR the set of circumstances is different for every universe. In the one I've been pretty focused on with art/short stories, Ila's mother was a one-night-stand Idris met at a bar in his mid-to-late-40s. Through nobody's fault, contraception failed and she ended up pregnant. She was young, impulsive, and bull-headed, but decided to keep the baby. Once Idris is informed of her pregnancy, he makes it his mission to financially support her. Lets her live rent-free in his home, pays for her college, and has no expectation for her to be anything more than just a roommate/co-parent.

That works... Fine. For a few years. She ends up bailing on her responsibilities as a mother and leaves one day without a word when Ila is three-ish, which leaves Idris as a single parent. Which he's fine with--she was not very grateful for what he'd done for her up until that point, and probably needed a lot of therapy that she never pursued and took out on Idris instead. She never enters the picture again, and Ila is fine with that. Idris is a nurturing, doting dad, and the women in the neighborhood probably helped with raising her too.