|
|
|
WHAT'S NEW
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Navigating stepmotherhood
|
|
|
One stepmother embraces her new role as parent, wife and friend.
|
|
|
By Jocelyn Laurence
|
|
|
|
|
I met them in a greasy spoon. We slid awkwardly into a red leatherette booth, me and my partner on one side, his two daughters, seven and eight years old, on the other. They were pretty, which was a bonus, but they were quiet, which was scary. What were they thinking? More to the point, what had I been thinking when I blithely agreed to meet them?
Their dad made the introductions and then there was silence -- a lot of silence. I tried to look approachable and open, resulting in a frozen expression that likely made me appear brain-dead. Meanwhile, what I really wanted to say was: "Right. Lovely to see you, but I gotta run." Finally, Meredith, the older one, volunteered shyly, "I like your rings." Julia smiled sweetly and said, "Me, too." I was hugely impressed -- and relieved. Children with social skills! Way better than my own! How did I get so lucky?
The step-parent's learning curve
That was more than 20 years ago, and I still feel as lucky today as I did at that moment. When I first met the girls and slowly became their stepmother, I knew next to nothing about children, but hey, I'd been a kid once. How hard could it be? Good thing I hadn't a clue. It was like deciding to scale Everest because you'd climbed a really steep hill when you were 10. Suddenly, I found myself inching along a precarious, almost invisible path that was supposed to lead to the Shangri-la of family harmony. In other words, the early months were definitely a challenge (the modern euphemism for insanely difficult).
The kids love iceberg lettuce; I hate iceberg lettuce. I made two salads. The girls got up for school early; I am not a morning person. I lay in bed listening to them argue and clatter up and down the stairs and moaned gently. And homework came to dominate my (by then) husband's and my after-supper hours on the days we had the children (don't even ask about the back-and-forth schedule. Only separated parents and quantum physicists could figure it out).
Meanwhile, when I got home from work, tired from dealing with people's demands, I wanted to be free of rampant egos. Ho ho. Kids, I quickly learned, are egos on the loose. One little darling would be frenziedly completing an overdue art project -- commandeering the dining room table where her dad and I had, minutes before, been ensconced with our glasses of wine -- when her sister would abruptly descend from upstairs, sobbing because her favourite T-shirt was at her mother's. (Children of separated parents never have the stuff they want where they want it. It is an ongoing and utterly hopeless struggle.)
Letting go of singledom
As a previously single woman, this was, to me, advanced insanity. Missing T-shirt? Buy another one. Project? Puhlease -- so they take a few marks off, who cares? As far as I was concerned, I'd worked hard all day, made two salads and cleared up the dinner dishes, only to see the dining room table disappear under a welter of paper and paints, sprinkled occasionally with tears. In the process, I was losing my life as I'd known it -- that is, a life controlled by me, as opposed to directed and affected by two small, beautiful, charming maniacs. But gradually the girls and I began to muddle along.
Despite my woeful inexperience, I figured out early on that, as the adult and the newcomer, I had to earn a place in their lives. It wasn't up to them to accommodate me. I began by helping with homework. The girls were in French immersion, but their dad spoke no French, so I hauled out my high school dictionnaire and brushed up on French math vocabulary (since I had been useless at math in English, this was an interesting exercise). The girls' father (like many men) was all thumbs when doing his daughters' hair; I, unlike many women, could barely manage to do my own hair. I learned to brush the girls' hair without eliciting a polite but definite "Ouch."
Then we discovered something we all loved: clothes shopping. The three of us fingered skirts and shirts and learned one of the oldest and most valuable skills in the world: how to chat. These chats turned into a movable feast, starting off in stores ("I hate frilly -- it's so girly"), moved to the street ("My English teacher is so annoying") and then into the house ("You have to listen to this").
Most of these idyllic times (and they often were) occurred thanks to Meredith and Julia's generosity of spirit. If they hadn't allowed me into their lives, I could have tried endlessly and failed. But they seemed (gasp!) to like my company, while I, feeling ignorant and clumsy, was profoundly touched by their acceptance.
Page 1 of 2
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 more articles |
|
|
|
|
|
|
