You know how you can appreciate someone, but you may not REALLY appreciate them until you've stood where they stood? Yeah, step-parenting has put me there.
My step-dad, Phil, has always been one of my heroes. Sounds cliche, I know, but he is. Not that in-fallible super-hero that parents are when you're tiny. And past that hard time when they fall from super-hero status and you see them as humans who make mistakes and with whom you may not always agree. He, like my mother and father, are now in that "hero" place where they are someone who serves as a role model. Someone I understand now, has walked a path that is not always easy, nor clear. And he's done it in such a way, that he looms even larger now than he did previously.
Phil made it look easy. The step-parenting thing. My dad was still very much in my life, so Phil didn't come along as a replacement, nor did he just decide that because of that, he'd stay on the periphery as just my mom's husband... he carved out his own role. The bonus parent. Some kids only got two parents. I got 3 parents growing up - 3 parents at back-to-school night and at football games and cheerleading competitions. I got 3 parents to ask for advice and cry to when I faced a hill I thought I couldn't climb. And am now I am blessed to have 4 with my dad's remarriage when I was 23. I'm blessed that Phil made the role so much.
Phil didn't treat us as a means to and end (my mother), nor did he treat us as in the way. He didn't disrupt the little unit my mom, sister and I had become. He ADDED to it. Gracefully. Quietly. With strength and humility I don't even know if he knows he possesses. I don't know if he knows what the moment meant to me, sitting on our shit-brown shag carpet, folded between the couch and coffee table (why didn't we sit on our furniture?) where he pored over a newspaper with me to help me understand what a "current events" assignment entailed. How he taught me that it wasn't a perfunctory assignment of read-repeat-write-get a grade. But to UNDERSTAND the article, think about it for myself, roll it around in my head, then write about it. I don't know if he knows how much him holding us on boogie boards in rolling surf as we learned, or patiently demonstrating snow-plowing with our skis on a bunny hill, or rolling our fingers on a football for a spiral, meant to me. But now I think... I didn't have any idea how those days and years were a careful balancing act for him.
I'm a step-parent now. And like Phil knew we had a father in our lives, my step-kids have a mom in their life. They live with her half the time, as a matter of fact. So I'm not a replacement, but I don't want to then act like I'll just be their father's wife and they don't matter to me like my own kids do. I'm doing what is turning out to be a difficult, rewarding, humbling, complex dance. I had no idea just how complex it was. No idea just how graceful Phil was... until I got here.
This step-parenting thing is not easy. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. ANYTHING. I have my two kids, and now I have two bonus kids. And it's a careful dance for me. With my two kiddos I make lunches when they don't want to buy hot lunch. I make sure that at my home, they have 1 1/2 - 2 weeks of clothes for whatever season we're in and Mike does the same at his. I proudly attend baseball games and swim classes and music performances. I try to come up with art projects or activities to do together. I want to vacation and fish and hike and make memories with my kids.
Now I have my bonus kids and I can and want to do those things for them and with them too. I don't want them to feel that that's a nuisance or stressful or like something I'll do only if I have extra time. I hope I don't make them feel that way. I don't care if 4 lunches instead of two means I'm up a bit later or the grocery bill is bigger. I don't care if Jayden's game at noon and William's at four means I'll just fill an entire Saturday with baseball... in fact, I LOVE it. I love wearing their team colors and praying I'm not embarrassing them as I LOUDLY cheer while they play. I love taking TWO young girls through a Justice outlet and listening to them gleefully try makeup or declare this outfit "the cutest ever!!". I love finding a house that sleeps six instead of a hotel that sleeps 3.
But the dance becomes that I don't want them to feel that these efforts for them are false or a means to an end. And I don't want them or their mother to feel I disrespect their relationship with her or that I'm stepping on her toes. I remember asking Phil about something and he would reply "ask your mom and dad"... NOT because he didn't want to be involved, but because he respected their position. And that's not an easy spot to be in. I see that now.
I'm pretty liberal when it comes to things like funky clothes or haircuts or hair color. My kids are amazing, bright and well behaved, so it doesn't matter to me if they do it while Lizzy has pink hair or William has a mohawk and black-painted fingernails. It doesn't. But that doesn't mean that all parents feel that way. Jason and/or Kelly may have reasons or lessons or messages behind what they do and don't allow. And the careful dance happens when those don't line up and our kids share a house.
Laney marched in the other day and announced she wanted to pierce her ears. Lizzy's are already, so this isn't a huge deal to me. But before I could even think I said, "have you asked your mother?". I hope she understands that it was not because I didn't care or didn't want to be involved. Shoot, I'll hold her hand and even punch a third hole in my ear to make her feel better if she wants... but that decision has to lie with Jason and Kelly. Can she get her ears pierced? Yeah, I want to say "of course!!" but that's not my call. This is where the dance is complex and I see now that I had NO IDEA how graceful Phil was at it.
I'm a huggy person and my kids and I are are pretty touchy-feely. I grab them in hugs a lot and the 3 of us as a unit pretty much crammed on a couch laying all over each other, sharing pillows and blankets and whatever else. We all had "sitting pillows" (you know, those pillows with a back and arms?) and we'd just grab whichever is closest, not a lot of "that's mine, that's yours". My careful dance comes in that my step-kids and Jason are more reserved. So I walk in and hug Lizzy, or I see her glee in a new outfit or if she's happy with the hairstyle I did for her and I check myself with Laney. Not because I don't want to hug her, but because I don't want to make her uncomfortable. She's not much of a hugger, like her dad. I don't want to try to mold her into a way that is unnatural for her. And yet, I worry that in my hugging Lizzy, she'll feel less important or left out. And she's not. I hope she knows how much she means to me and this careful dance I do leaves me wondering just how to express that within her own comfort zone.
Like I'm not sure about if Phil understood those huge simple moments for me, I don't know that my step-kids see how much certain moments with them mean to me. This summer, shortly before Jayden broke his leg at the Lake House, he and I went in a boat together. I know he wanted to be with his dad, who was already on the lake with William. And he was going to wait, but finally agreed that I could row him out to fish. He may never know what that time in the raft with him meant to me. Laughing, helping him unhook his fish, watching him bait his own hook and seeing the joy on his face when the tug-tug of a fish on the line came. He may never know how much just getting to pick him up from one of his middle school football games, or having him trust me enough to help him when he's sick or injured means. But I hope that those moments also never make him feel obligated or pressured or put upon to have a relationship with me that is beyond his comfort zone, nor ever make him feel like I would ever want to replace Kelly. I'd like to be a bonus parent and make him understand that I respect and love the fact that he has a relationship with his mother.
Later, Lizzy, Laney and I fished 3 of us in a boat. It is and will likely remain one of my best memories. 3 of us in a raft, trying to fish and handle a net and not spill the worms while we got soaked and laughed and yelled "fish in the boat! fish in the boat" when one of our fish popped off the hook and we tried to get it out without getting poked by the spikes that they have. I don't know if Laney knows what it means to share those moments. And again, I can only hope that I can keep my bonus parenting in a place that is comfortable for her and respects the bond she has with her mom.
I see that our kids, too, have to do a careful dance. Especially with William, I can see how much he wants to bond with Jason and Jayden. I see him puff up with pleasure and pride to be part of the "boys car" when we take two cars somewhere. I remember, on one of our early fishing trips before we were married, when Jason and Jayden crossed some rocks, how much he wanted to be there too. And was torn, because he wanted to fish with me too. I see Jason also doing the careful dance I do and having the worries I do. I know he doesn't want my kiddos feeling as if they are less than his, but then worries that he may overcompensate and make his own kids feel as if he does more with William and Lizzy. I am the same. I don't want my kids to feel like I'm making a larger effort as some kind of attempt to ingratiate myself with Jayden and Laney, but I don't want Jayden and Laney to feel secondary to William and Lizzy.
And so we keep dancing. The 6 of us now. Trying new steps and learning not to step on one another's toes. When my brother came along, I didn't feel any differently with Phil or about Phil. I never felt lesser or like Dane was HIS and we weren't. I just don't think I appreciated how Phil did it. How he balanced this all so carefully. I assume that thoughts or doubts raced through his head. I assume that it wasn't as easy as he made it look. Unless it was just instinctual for him. But something tells me, as I walk this path now, that it wasn't easy. That it took thought and choice and compromise.
Mom, Phil my Dad, my sister and Dane even vacationed together a couple times and had mutual Father's Days and other events and holidays. It seemed natural to me. Easy. My three parents, I see now, MADE it easy for me... but it likely was not easy for them. There was likely some discomfort or juggling or choice. But as they sat there together on the sidelines of a drill team parade or shared a Father's Day table for a brunch or traveled to Hawaii with ALL of us together, they made it easy on me. I did not then, see the dance they were dancing. I was just a kid with 3 parents.
I can only pray that Jason, Mike, Kelly, Guy (Kelly's husband) and I can make it easy on these four amazing humans we are blessed to call our children. I can only we pray we do these dance steps as gracefully. That we add to their lives and not make it feel like a tug-of-war or like any of us aren't involved and on the periphery.
And as a step-mom I can only keep trying to walk this tight rope and do this dance without harming too many toes. I can only keep trying, when they are with me and Jason, to be a "bonus mom" who adds without taking away from something else. Who makes our home feel like a "unit" and not his and hers, us and them. I don't want any of them to feel like we're forcing square pegs in round holes, but that, in our house, the pieces fit together like a puzzle.
My mom and dad, throughout certain steps I've walked, have loomed large to me as I see what they had to do, fears they faced as a parent, stresses they faced as single parents. All 3 of my parents have become heroes to me as I grow to understand the intricacies of marriage, divorce and raising children.
But Phil now looms large in a "bonus" way. I'm beginning, only beginning, to understand he also had another role as a step-parent that is different, difficult, wonderful and complex. I'm so thankful he did it so well. So that I have something, some model, to help me.
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