I think about our lives in juxtaposition a lot. Mine and the real mom of my step-daughter.
I wake up to the song of crickets and the crackling of the coffee brewing in the kitchen around four in the morning, seven days a week. Mary’s bowl from dinner last night is still sitting on the end table in the living room and my laptop greets me with sticky keys from soup-licked fingers. A drawing from three days ago still sits abandoned on the coffee table. She cleaned up last night before bed but even she can’t keep up with the trail she leaves behind when she gets on a rampage of creativity and takes it out on every room of the house. I brush my teeth, looking jadedly at the remnants of her latest project: making homemade body-glitter (recipe compliments of the book I picked up for her on my latest excursion to Marshall’s). I leave for work around six in the morning and I decide to let her sleep in until just before I leave. When I get to work I have to call to check on things just before it’s time for her to get on the school bus. I can’t help myself. Her father’s home, but he’s a dad; His strengths lie in areas like catching frogs with her and knowing the special way she takes her ramen noodles, the way that even a master chef couldn’t recreate. When it comes to her wardrobe, so long as her underwear isn’t over her head, she’s dressed appropriately. Hi Mare, it’s me. I just wanted to check on things; You finished breakfast yet? Hair combed, teeth brushed? Don’t forget to do your chores before you leave, you have plenty of time. Remember: only another two weeks of remembering to do them everyday and you get your first allowance. You dressed yet? You’re not wearing the same outfit you wore yesterday, right? Clean undies, clean socks. Okay. Have fun at school. Love you. See you tonight.
Ten hours later, I step out front with Spencer and Matthew to ask Mary how her day went at school only to be greeted merrily at the front step by that same purple shirt I laid out for her the day before (albeit over a different pair of shorts -- A dirty pair of shorts, but different from the ones she wore with it yesterday at least). In front of her closet, I yank impatiently at the string overhead, illuminating with a click an explosion of Macy’s back-to-school best, so many that the bar holding them up is working harder than the labor it was built to withstand. And I start: “Hundreds of dollars, Mary. Hundred of dollars of brand new clothing and you can’t manage to pick out a clean shirt to wear to school? That’s irresponsible. Your parents should not be picking out your clothing for you at nine years old. How many times have we been over this? Just the other day! I try to give you some freedom because you’re getting older now. I don’t even mind terribly if you pick out something that doesn’t match every once in a while… But is it so much to expect you to be able to pick something clean from off of a hanger instead of the last thing you threw inside of your hamper? What do I even wash and dry and fold and put your clothes away for?? I even called to make sure…” I’m lifting my shoulders and shaking my head uncomprehendingly; I feel the gestures of every fed-up lecture I’ve ever been subject to that made any impact on me at all flow through my muscles and I try to keep to the point, to not get caught up in the rant, to keep her attention, to make sure what I’m saying is getting through………
The last few words have had an obvious bearing on her as she cuts them off almost carelessly to ask a question about what she should change into. The pitch in her voice is high and genial, void of all defensiveness; As if we’re still just buddies, picking out clothes for one another before catching a movie or visiting a boy. “I like these pants,” she starts, taking advantage of the opening in my lecture. “Aunt Becca has good taste. I thought they would itch, but they’re actually pretty comfortable. Is this a nice outfit to wear to mom’s?”
“Yeah, she’ll like it,” I take the bait, knowing and acceptingly. I reiterate my point a few more times, just to pound them into place, dead horse or not, trying to hold on to what little sternness hasn’t melted away in the warmth of her friendliness. I make her tell me that she understands before letting it go.
By the time we make it back onto the patio to wait for her mom, we’re arm in arm and all is well, at least until she inevitably does it again in a few weeks. It’s Thursday: her mom’s visitation day. Matthew’s a part of the ritual now that he’s old enough to roam the yard while we wait and now that her mom has started actually showing up intermittently on the days that she’s court ordered to. He plays out front with Mary in the yard while we wait to see if his big sister’s mom shows up - a lady I often wonder what his little mind makes of. As is usual, thirty-five minutes after her time was to start, Mary is starting to get antsy to give up and go join all of her friends on the other side of the sidewalk who are zipping up and down the street on wheels of every shape, size and shade of pink: razor scooters, electric scooters, roller blades and hand-me-down bikes. She knows that she has to wait for at least thirty minutes because that’s what the custody agreement papers stipulate. I imagine those papers are kind of like the Bible to her: she’s heard about them so much that she almost instinctively knows what they say, though she’s never actually looked at them. Being only nine, she probably assumes she wouldn’t understand the language even if she tried to read them herself, so she’s in a position of having to trust two very separate interpretations of these guidelines that dictate nearly every facet of her life.
Her mother is allotted a half an hour to be late, so long as there are extenuating circumstances to which she gives the custodial parent prior notice of, without our being able to deny her access to Mary. Though we’ve never received prior notice and there have never been “extenuating circumstances” to anyone’s knowledge, her mother has made an art of showing up no earlier than 40 minutes late every single time; utilizing the excuse to Mary that she considers herself to only be ten minutes late, and that if we were to deny Mary access to her Mother (instead of the other way around), we would be monsters, obviously. After more than a year of allowing it to continue without protest, we finally decided that if she shows up even one minute past the thirty minutes she’s allowed (though technically she’s not even allowed that time unless she give us notice) we weren’t going to send Mary with her. When the day came and the thirty minutes passed, we left a note on the door, quoting the relevant phrase in the custody papers exactly, and we waited for her to call the police -- an almost involuntary reaction from her to every situation she has ever put herself into. The police made her cry in front of our house without even needing to speak to us, causing the spectacle she wanted to create for our neighbors, while Mary cried in her room because her mom was here, and yes, we actually made her leave. We felt like the monsters her mom wanted us to feel like. Her daughter’s tears were always a sick victory to her because they could bring us to our knees and she knew it. Her mom was made to leave by the authorities and we did our best to explain to Mary that even though it was a tough situation we did not want to put her in, it would enforce respect of the rules to her mom, therefore allowing Mary to have all of the time with her mom she’s allowed to have during future visitations- instead of having to lose forty minutes in the beginning and another thirty minutes at the end when her mom drops her off early. Mary didn’t see it that way; she saw it the way that we saw it in our heart of hearts too: that it would discourage her mom from getting her altogether until she found another way to kick us in the back of the knee. It did stop her from getting Mary for three weeks. When the forth week came, though, she only showed up 29 minutes late. No notice, but it was evidence of a baby step, and that was good enough for us.
We hand Mary the cell phone we’ve been keeping on the patio table between us to quietly watch the time. Forty minutes past the hour, Mary lays in the grass by the tree with the phone to her ear, while her brother waves a twig valiantly in the air above her, blissfully oblivious in a way that could bring a parent to tears that I’m not sure would be happy or sad. They look beautiful in everyway that the eye and mind can perceive esthetic splendor; an ironic juxtaposition of grace and innocence, befittingly beautiful on both ends. He keeps her young and free-spirited when life demands an unfair maturity of her, and he is her brave protector in that wonderful way, though she is the one that he is lucky to have to look up to so adoringly. I thank God that my son is fortunate enough to have such a shining example of courage and strength and humility by which to be influenced everyday… especially on the Thursdays they spend together, playing in the grass of the front yard.
I wake up to the song of crickets and the crackling of the coffee brewing in the kitchen around four in the morning, seven days a week. Mary’s bowl from dinner last night is still sitting on the end table in the living room and my laptop greets me with sticky keys from soup-licked fingers. A drawing from three days ago still sits abandoned on the coffee table. She cleaned up last night before bed but even she can’t keep up with the trail she leaves behind when she gets on a rampage of creativity and takes it out on every room of the house. I brush my teeth, looking jadedly at the remnants of her latest project: making homemade body-glitter (recipe compliments of the book I picked up for her on my latest excursion to Marshall’s). I leave for work around six in the morning and I decide to let her sleep in until just before I leave. When I get to work I have to call to check on things just before it’s time for her to get on the school bus. I can’t help myself. Her father’s home, but he’s a dad; His strengths lie in areas like catching frogs with her and knowing the special way she takes her ramen noodles, the way that even a master chef couldn’t recreate. When it comes to her wardrobe, so long as her underwear isn’t over her head, she’s dressed appropriately. Hi Mare, it’s me. I just wanted to check on things; You finished breakfast yet? Hair combed, teeth brushed? Don’t forget to do your chores before you leave, you have plenty of time. Remember: only another two weeks of remembering to do them everyday and you get your first allowance. You dressed yet? You’re not wearing the same outfit you wore yesterday, right? Clean undies, clean socks. Okay. Have fun at school. Love you. See you tonight.
Ten hours later, I step out front with Spencer and Matthew to ask Mary how her day went at school only to be greeted merrily at the front step by that same purple shirt I laid out for her the day before (albeit over a different pair of shorts -- A dirty pair of shorts, but different from the ones she wore with it yesterday at least). In front of her closet, I yank impatiently at the string overhead, illuminating with a click an explosion of Macy’s back-to-school best, so many that the bar holding them up is working harder than the labor it was built to withstand. And I start: “Hundreds of dollars, Mary. Hundred of dollars of brand new clothing and you can’t manage to pick out a clean shirt to wear to school? That’s irresponsible. Your parents should not be picking out your clothing for you at nine years old. How many times have we been over this? Just the other day! I try to give you some freedom because you’re getting older now. I don’t even mind terribly if you pick out something that doesn’t match every once in a while… But is it so much to expect you to be able to pick something clean from off of a hanger instead of the last thing you threw inside of your hamper? What do I even wash and dry and fold and put your clothes away for?? I even called to make sure…” I’m lifting my shoulders and shaking my head uncomprehendingly; I feel the gestures of every fed-up lecture I’ve ever been subject to that made any impact on me at all flow through my muscles and I try to keep to the point, to not get caught up in the rant, to keep her attention, to make sure what I’m saying is getting through………
The last few words have had an obvious bearing on her as she cuts them off almost carelessly to ask a question about what she should change into. The pitch in her voice is high and genial, void of all defensiveness; As if we’re still just buddies, picking out clothes for one another before catching a movie or visiting a boy. “I like these pants,” she starts, taking advantage of the opening in my lecture. “Aunt Becca has good taste. I thought they would itch, but they’re actually pretty comfortable. Is this a nice outfit to wear to mom’s?”
“Yeah, she’ll like it,” I take the bait, knowing and acceptingly. I reiterate my point a few more times, just to pound them into place, dead horse or not, trying to hold on to what little sternness hasn’t melted away in the warmth of her friendliness. I make her tell me that she understands before letting it go.
By the time we make it back onto the patio to wait for her mom, we’re arm in arm and all is well, at least until she inevitably does it again in a few weeks. It’s Thursday: her mom’s visitation day. Matthew’s a part of the ritual now that he’s old enough to roam the yard while we wait and now that her mom has started actually showing up intermittently on the days that she’s court ordered to. He plays out front with Mary in the yard while we wait to see if his big sister’s mom shows up - a lady I often wonder what his little mind makes of. As is usual, thirty-five minutes after her time was to start, Mary is starting to get antsy to give up and go join all of her friends on the other side of the sidewalk who are zipping up and down the street on wheels of every shape, size and shade of pink: razor scooters, electric scooters, roller blades and hand-me-down bikes. She knows that she has to wait for at least thirty minutes because that’s what the custody agreement papers stipulate. I imagine those papers are kind of like the Bible to her: she’s heard about them so much that she almost instinctively knows what they say, though she’s never actually looked at them. Being only nine, she probably assumes she wouldn’t understand the language even if she tried to read them herself, so she’s in a position of having to trust two very separate interpretations of these guidelines that dictate nearly every facet of her life.
Her mother is allotted a half an hour to be late, so long as there are extenuating circumstances to which she gives the custodial parent prior notice of, without our being able to deny her access to Mary. Though we’ve never received prior notice and there have never been “extenuating circumstances” to anyone’s knowledge, her mother has made an art of showing up no earlier than 40 minutes late every single time; utilizing the excuse to Mary that she considers herself to only be ten minutes late, and that if we were to deny Mary access to her Mother (instead of the other way around), we would be monsters, obviously. After more than a year of allowing it to continue without protest, we finally decided that if she shows up even one minute past the thirty minutes she’s allowed (though technically she’s not even allowed that time unless she give us notice) we weren’t going to send Mary with her. When the day came and the thirty minutes passed, we left a note on the door, quoting the relevant phrase in the custody papers exactly, and we waited for her to call the police -- an almost involuntary reaction from her to every situation she has ever put herself into. The police made her cry in front of our house without even needing to speak to us, causing the spectacle she wanted to create for our neighbors, while Mary cried in her room because her mom was here, and yes, we actually made her leave. We felt like the monsters her mom wanted us to feel like. Her daughter’s tears were always a sick victory to her because they could bring us to our knees and she knew it. Her mom was made to leave by the authorities and we did our best to explain to Mary that even though it was a tough situation we did not want to put her in, it would enforce respect of the rules to her mom, therefore allowing Mary to have all of the time with her mom she’s allowed to have during future visitations- instead of having to lose forty minutes in the beginning and another thirty minutes at the end when her mom drops her off early. Mary didn’t see it that way; she saw it the way that we saw it in our heart of hearts too: that it would discourage her mom from getting her altogether until she found another way to kick us in the back of the knee. It did stop her from getting Mary for three weeks. When the forth week came, though, she only showed up 29 minutes late. No notice, but it was evidence of a baby step, and that was good enough for us.
We hand Mary the cell phone we’ve been keeping on the patio table between us to quietly watch the time. Forty minutes past the hour, Mary lays in the grass by the tree with the phone to her ear, while her brother waves a twig valiantly in the air above her, blissfully oblivious in a way that could bring a parent to tears that I’m not sure would be happy or sad. They look beautiful in everyway that the eye and mind can perceive esthetic splendor; an ironic juxtaposition of grace and innocence, befittingly beautiful on both ends. He keeps her young and free-spirited when life demands an unfair maturity of her, and he is her brave protector in that wonderful way, though she is the one that he is lucky to have to look up to so adoringly. I thank God that my son is fortunate enough to have such a shining example of courage and strength and humility by which to be influenced everyday… especially on the Thursdays they spend together, playing in the grass of the front yard.
Two minutes later, she walks up to her dad, hands him the phone. “I’ll be at Kaitlyn’s.” Similarly sociable tone but a shade darker, a little spiked with disappointment but she carries it well. “See ya buddy,” she says to the toddler at her feet. He brings her back to life and it’s good to see her smile at him while she walks away. He’s sad to see her go and that’s something I’m glad she get’s to see. We hope she’s forgetting about the disappointment as quickly as she makes it seem. But we have no way of knowing.
When I think about our lives, it isn’t days like this that come to mind. No, I have my mind made up about days like this already. When I think about moments like this, and what she’s doing after she hangs up the phone with her daughter, in the same moment that I’m watching Mary make her way down the lawn and onto the sidewalk that leads to her friend’s - whose real mom will welcome her in and offer her a snack the way that real mom’s are there to do for their daughter’s friends - I assume it feels like an indulging of selfishness; the kind we’ve all tasted before on smaller scales. I imagine the way that I felt when I was fifteen and I quit my first job - The feeling of that instant gratification that comes with giving up on something you didn’t want to put the effort into; the way it felt to just go home when I could have put in an honest day’s work (humiliating as it was to stand behind that counter at McDonalds). She isn’t thinking about the ramifications of lying to her daughter week after week after week, constantly digging herself deeper and not caring that she’s dragging her daughter down with her, setting her daughter up for a life just as confusing and empty as her own; she’s probably thinking about saving herself the drive, saving herself the effort it takes to entertain a kid she barely knows anymore or saving herself the embarrassment of having to hear about Mary’s life now and everything she’s done in the past two weeks, two months, two school years that her mom hasn’t been a part of. She’s just doing what comes easily, the path of least resistance: lying. The problem with being addicted to instant gratification the way that people like her are, is that it narrows your perspective. You only see what’s directly in front of you; you don’t see far enough ahead or remember far enough behind you to realize that you’ll be trying to outrun your accountability for a long time to come; a far more exhausting feat than simply owning up to your responsibilities. The rewards of instant gratification are always shorter, shallower, and wracked with a heavy burden of guilt - something I feel is a strong obligation of mine to teach Mary, myself. It’s a responsibility that’s terrifyingly intimidating and one that I don’t know I have it in me to accomplish, but when you have other people counting on you to be strong, you swallow your fears and you do the best that you can. I have to be better than myself. And that’s what this journey is all about.
When I think about her life compared to mine, I think about the day-to-day absences a life without Mary would have.
I think about the pain in the ass lectures and the headaches that come with talking to a blonde-headed brick wall - and then I think about the hugs we have afterward, and the pride that comes with noticing her remembering to do something the way that I taught her to.
I think about how quickly I could get a load of laundry done if I didn’t have to have her help me - and then I think about how good it feels to see her smile from the end result of learning something new.
I think about not having to wake up at four o’clock in the morning in order to make her breakfast before dropping her off at daycare and starting a long commute to work - then I think about the early morning conversations we get to share and how much I miss them in the summertime, when we all get to sleep in and her dad’s stuck with breakfast duty after I go to work.
Her mom doesn’t have to worry about keeping her grades up (studying with her, reading with her every night, fighting with her about reading every night, helping her with 4th grade homework you don’t even remember how to do anymore, pasting googly-eyes on projects it takes longer to clean up after than to do in the first place, going to parent-teacher conferences after eleven hours of work and only four hours of sleep the night before) -- But then again, she doesn’t get to take her out to Friendly’s and shop with her at the mall when she makes Honor Roll.
When most women become new moms, they get to ease into it. If I didn’t have Mary, I often thought about how I could ruin a good two and a half years worth of casseroles before my son would ever really know it. I could learn to cook in the time it takes him to outgrow his Gerber Graduates and mashed potato meals and he would be none the wiser. We step-moms to older children have to hit the ground, running. Three weeks after I moved in with my (now) husband and his daughter, she got into a fight with her best friend over a new best friend who thought Mary’s old best friend was a nerd. I was taking phone calls from distraught parents about the dispute made famous throughout the small streets of our suburban neighborhood and having heart-to-hearts with Mary about loyalty and the importance of friendship; how to know when to walk away from an argument and how to know when it’s your responsibility to stand up for someone weaker than you who’s being bullied. I hear women these days whine about waking up at three a.m. to snuggle up on the couch with a Boppy and a good book to breastfeed their tiny newborns and I envy their cakewalk into maternal life.
Over this past weekend, we let Mary’s best friend (the aforementioned “old best friend” we’re very glad to have back in her rightful place) spend the night. Spencer and I shared a few Coronas over blending up milkshakes for the ladies and Matthew stayed up way past his bedtime to rock out with the girls to Miley Cirus CD’s and the Wizards of Waverly Place Movie. After Spencer tucked Matthew into bed, me and the girls made homemade lip gloss -- (How cool is that??) and they asked me questions about boys and about friendship and about God that for the first time in my life, I was able to confidently answer (inspired by a stack of custody papers to finally crack open my bible, which I’ve since kept handy in my van with me everywhere I go). We originally told Mary no about letting her friend spend the night… But as it turned out, it ended up being well worth the effort to clean up the pillows and umbrella straws left down in the basement and the bacon and egg breakfast I was in charge of the morning after. A book that I’m reading now, “That’s My Son: How Moms Can Influence Boys to Become Men of Character” acknowledges in a certain chapter that it takes upwards of about twenty years for a mother to find out if the theories she used to raise her children right yield the kind of results that she’d hoped. But even in the smaller, everyday experiences whose importance can so easily be taken for granted or overlooked entirely, I find more and more that instant gratification has no place in the life of real mom.
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