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I miss my mommy (and daddy)–but not having a wicked stepmother like myself

07 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by lifefromthestep in Parenting, Stepparenting

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

anxiety, daughters, divorce, ex-wife, fathers, parenting, stepchildren, stepmoms

One of the lowlights of my early years as a stepmom (my first year as an official stepmom, actually) came at bedtime. Our oldest son and daughter shared a room and slept in bunkbeds. They refused to use sheets because they slept in sleeping bags at their mother’s house. This drove me crazy. I remember actually saying to the four year old, “This just isn’t civilized.” You see where this is going. I was not seeing our children for the ages they were and I was letting my feelings about their mom (and she was not particularly helpful in the first year we were married) get in the way of my own common sense. My lowlight is not about the sleeping bags, however. It gets worse. One night, as my husband and I were going to our room to bed, we heard the kids talking behind their closed door. When we went in to see what was going on, our son was talking to his little sister, standing on tiptoe to see over the rail of the top bunk. He got in trouble for being out of bed and talking when they should be sleeping. His reply was, “she won’t stop saying that she misses mom.”

It was like a shot to the heart directly through my insecurity about my role. I can see that now, but all I felt at the time was how much it hurt. I did not think much of their mother or her actions toward them or us that year, but, as with the sleeping bags, I let all of that emotion get in the way of my seeing the situation through the eyes of the four year old. We had moved into a new house just before we got married. My title had changed and her mother’s behavior toward me and us had changed (for the worse). She was sleeping in a new room on the top bunk which, even though she had chosen it, must have been a little scary. Her dad told her to just go to sleep, that it was time for bed. We left the room and a few minutes later, heard them talking again. Replay, but this time I stepped in. “I know you miss your mom, but she’s not here,” I said. “I want my momma,” our daughter said in a babyish voice that was not normal for her. “I know, but she’s not here, so just go to sleep.” “I miss my momma,” she said again. “Well, daddy’s here and I’m here,” I said, trying to bring in the fact that she was not alone. “I want my momma.”

Every time like an arrow. I didn’t have this image then, but I do now. I felt like St. Sebastian.

“Well, she’s not here, so you’re going to have to just go to sleep,” I said, but this time the frustration was clear in my voice.

“Maybe she can call momma,” her brother said. He was now also using the babyish voice and he was seven. This pushed up my temperature.

“It’s too late to call your mother. She has daddy. She’s fine. Go to sleep.” And out I went. My husband came behind me, very quiet.

“She’s just four and she misses her mom.”

“Well, she’s going to have to get used to it.” This in a tone that said the conversation was over. My husband went back into the bedroom, murmured to the kids, and joined me in our room. The next morning, our son said his sister had cried herself to sleep.

Now I cannot think of that episode without absolutely cringing. Yes, her mother was a shit that year. Yes, her mother was making some choices that did not say her kids were her first priority (from my perspective) that year. But she was their mother and who do we all want when we’re feeling insecure? Our mommies. Why didn’t I let her call her mother? It wasn’t that late. I didn’t let her call because I didn’t want her mother to know that the kids missed her when they were with us. And I thought that having her dad and I was enough. I was the biggest shit and I wish heartily that I could relive that night. I deserved the name of wicked stepmother.

Why am I thinking of that night today? Not because it’s my scheduled day to self-flagellate about my stepmotherly sins. I’m thinking of that night because I am missing my mom (and my dad). I’m 39 years old and my parents are out of the country for two weeks. Their flight took off 15 minutes ago (if it left on time) and I miss them already. I don’t like that I won’t see them or that I can’t just pick up the phone and hear their voices. Why? I am close to my parents. But a big part, I think, is because, as I’m coming to feel my own aging process as I approach forty, I’m experiencing a heightened awareness of their aging process. All of which is making them ever dearer to me.

So thank goodness I don’t have a wicked stepmother who’s telling me that I have my husband, therefore I shouldn’t miss my parents or telling me that I can’t Facebook them because it’s too late. Luckily, at 39 years old, if anyone did try to tell me that, I’d give her the look, say something witty like, “Outta my way, bitch,” and make contact with my parents.

Sorry, baby, that I caused you a night of loneliness and crying yourself to sleep. I hope I’ve made up for some of that debt in the years since. And I’ll keep trying to make up for it in the years ahead of us.

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Middle-aged wanton sex goddess to wobbly bits phobic. Thank you, Bridget Jones

01 Monday Aug 2011

Posted by lifefromthestep in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

aging, anxiety, bridget jones, colin firth, daughters, hugh grant, humor

Last Sunday night I saw Bridget Jones’ Diary on television. It was on again this Sunday night and, since it was a million degrees inside my naturally cooled home (aka fans and windows), I watched it again as I prayed for the temp to go down. Hours later, when the indoors had finally cooled to come close to matching the outdoors, my youngest daughter wanted me to go work out with her. She likes to “grow her muscles.” An admirable trait in someone so young. So I grabbed the DVD of Bridget Jones Edge of Reason and headed to the exercise room, which is the highest room in our house, thus the warmest.

In the first film, Bridget natters on about her single status, her weight, her cigarette and alcohol consumption. In an infamous scene in which she first sleeps with Hugh Grant’s character, she is caught out wearing slimming granny panties.

Later, she answers the phone with the smart, “Bridget Jones, wanton sex goddess with a very bad man between her thighs.” Once dumped, she jumps on the spin bike, sheds some pounds, gains some confidence, and is rewarded by being told by Colin Firth’s character, Mark Darcy, that he likes her just as she is.

Fast forward to the sequel, where Bridget hides in a sheet as she dresses to keep Darcy from seeing her naked, at which point he says he likes her wobbly bits. Better than calorie-free dark chocolate, right ladies?

Does anyone remember the scene near the end of the first film where Bridget is running after Darcy, who’s read the awful things she’s said about him in her diary? She’s in her leopard-print panties, which she’s donned in anticipation of romance, and a too-short cami as she runs out the door of her apartment. This scene gives me nightmares. Is that what most of us look like from that angle? Horror of horrors.

So I’m on the spin bike, with no tension, but, hey, it was a million degrees, and, for a cool down, I’m on my back, knees bent, lifting the four-year-old with my legs like she’s flying. I’m wearing nylon workout shorts and a sports bra. And she says, “Mom, you look like you’re going to have another baby. Is that just fat?” This last bit means we have, at least, successful drilled into her that she will definitely be the last sibling.

Goodbye, middle-aged wanton sex goddess, hello Bridget worrying about her wobbly bits. Hey, since you’re so close, would you mind passing the cheese balls?

A Hedgehog?

31 Sunday Jul 2011

Posted by lifefromthestep in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

anxiety, biomom, daughters, divorce, ex-wife, forgiveness, parenting

From http://www.awf.org/content/wildlife/detail/hedgehog

Several weeks ago, I sent my youngest camping with her big sister and my husband’s ex-wife and her family. I don’t (always) think my husband’s ex-wife is evil. In another universe, where I knew her from some other relationship, I could even imagine us being friendly acquaintances. My biggest fears at the time were my little one being abducted in the state campground where they were staying or being hit by a car, drowning, etc. I should have known better.

I was bathing my little daughter the other night and it was time to wash her hair, which is never her favorite activity. We soaped it up and she said that my frenemy told her, when they were washing her hair in the lake, that she looked like a hedgehog.

Because I’ve had a lot of practice with this, I bit back my real response and assured my baby girl that my frenemy was just teasing. At which point my baby said that it hurt her feelings.

Bite harder. A little slipped through because, hey, it’s the real world. My husband’s ex wears her hair, and has for years, in a spiky bob considered pro forma for the woman over 30. You know the one. So I said, “Well, I guess she would know what a hedgehog looks like.”

I know, I know. Get out the ruler and slap my wrists. I’m sure she was teasing. But her teasing and the tone she uses tends to be rather stinging. I’ve watched for years as she undermined the self esteem of our shared children. I’ll be damned if she’s going to do it to the ones we don’t share.

Sometimes I imagine us ending up in the same nursing home. Roommates even. And I fantasize about biting comments I could make about her aroma, her looks, her clothes, her visitors. Not her weight. She’ll be a stick even in the box. In my better moments I think we’ll sit around and laugh about the fights we’ve had and the little things that made us fume or write ranting blog entries. And then we’ll join hands and sing cumbaya together and the lion and the lamb will be as one and Jesus will return. I’ll be a wrinkly old balding white woman with horrible body odor and no visitors wearing calico house coats and sprouting more chin hairs than a camel and she’ll still have no wrinkles thanks to the oily skin she battled most of her life and be dressed in the latest fashion for the over 80 as she greets her supplicant visitors from her wheelchair throne. That’s how life works. Maybe I’ll have dementia by that time and won’t realize how it’s all played out. Not that I’ve spent hours fantasizing about this. Just some passing thoughts.

Until then, I’m off to show my little one the pic I found of this cute little hedgehog so that, even if she doesn’t visit me in the nursing home, she’ll go into adulthood with her sense of self intact.

Overanalyzing –My New Superpower?

28 Thursday Jul 2011

Posted by lifefromthestep in Uncategorized

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Tags

aging, anxiety, family, marriage

Moms don’t go on vacations. How do we know that? Not because they still have to deal with food and clothes and bathing schedules. Because there are no pictures to prove they were there.

At least that’s how it works in my family. Moms take the pictures. Which means moms aren’t in the pictures.

I have had a couple of melt downs about this to my husband in the course of our 17-year relationship. He and the kids have been many places and done many fun things. If only I’d been along.

On last year’s camping trip, he was hyperattentive. There are actually multiple photos of me at various points through the brief trip. Even one of me in my bikini that he posted to Facebook, much to my chagrin.

This year, on one of our little family hikes out of the campground, he made sure to include me in a picture with the kids. Check one for retention of the lesson. I also made it into a sunset picture. But no bikini shot this year.

Which got me thinking. Why not? I’m a couple of pounds heavier this summer, but I don’t see a huge difference in my shape. I even have a new suit.

Paraonoia sets in and gives me the answer. I must look terrible from the angles I can’t see and he doesn’t want me to have to face that harsh reality.

Don’t be silly.

Or maybe he doesn’t want a picture of me in my bikini this year. He’d rather keep his pic of his wife a year younger with fewer wrinkles and less gray hair.

Ridiculous.

He just wasn’t thinking about me that way.

What? I’ve just hit my sexual peak now that I’m comfortably middle-aged! That can’t be it!

He did have a headache nearly every day of our trip.

And then I hear my husband’s voice inside my head. –I can’t win. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

Maybe it’s time to break out the superhero tights and sew the O on the chest. Now that he’d take a picture of:)

Re-entry is a Little Rough

26 Tuesday Jul 2011

Posted by lifefromthestep in Musing/Ranting

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Tags

aging, anxiety, bridget jones' diary, colin firth, hugh grant, musings, sex fantasies, vacation

So after a brilliant week in the Upper Peninsula, more about that later this week, I rushed off to a professional workshop for five days. What was I thinking? To go from lounging on the beach in the sun to sitting in a squishy cushioned chair with no lumbar support in an over-air-conditioned conference room with no windows for eight+ hours a day? Insanity.

When I left home yesterday, my husband commented that I was having trouble relinquishing control–this as I delivered a stream of “don’t forgets.” As part of my middle-aged zen, I affirmed his assessment, then walked out the door, leaving the laundry undone, the groceries unpurchased, the dinner unmade. I haven’t received any 911 type of phone calls, so I’m assuming they’re all surviving without me.

I have a roommate in the hotel. She’s cool, but I’m middle-aged, so the whole roommate thing is a readjustment to younger days for me. This morning we drove to the conference site and found that things weren’t quite set up yet. We didn’t quite start on time. The workshop is not quite (meaning nowhere near) full. A workshop for 15 people is being attended by five. VIP treatment. Nice spin. Poor organizer.

People are rude. They cancelled last minute. One woman showed up just before lunch, complained about the session list once we got back into the conference room and said she wished she hadn’t come. She spent the afternoon sessions browsing the web. Seriously. This is an older woman. Rudeness is not reserved for the young, particularly digital rudeness. At the end of the day, she left and is not coming back. Turns out she has not paid her fees and has no intention of doing so. Unethical behavior also has no age boundaries.

Did I enjoy sitting all day listening to material that I could have read at home in half the time? Not particularly. However, would I have read it at home, even in half the time? Not so likely, which is why I committed to coming to this workshop right after my vacation.

And God sent me a bonus. When I went to the hotel’s exercise room last night to get some actual exercise after hours in the car, I turned on the TV (I was the only person using the room) and Bridget Jones’ Diary had just come on. It was just the motivation I needed to exercise for 90 minutes and enough to scare away the one man who looked in to check out the facilities. And a youngish Hugh Grant and Colin Firth were enough to pull me through the dry moments of professional workshop today. I think I’ll watch it again when I get home just to hear Colin Firth say he likes Bridget very much, just the way she is. Now off to the exercise room to change the way I am:)

http://imfantasyparade.tumblr.com/post/553220628/mark-darcy-colin-firth-bridget-joness-diary

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