The art of stepmothering

While it used to be that stepmothers really got the short end of the stick, with stories depicting them as psychopathic egomaniacs, treating their sweet innocent stepdaughters (they're always daughters, and they're always miss Universe material too) as personal servants, or sending them out to die in the woods, and committing various other deplorable deeds, today's media portrayals don't do a whole lot for our image either. Nowadays, we're either self-effacing, self-sacrificing, and possess a never-ending supply of patience and understanding (think Julia Roberts in "Stepmom") or young, beautiful, spoiled, and incredibly jealous (think Modern Family). Interestingly, neither portrayal comes even close to the reality of stepmothering.

I realize I hardly write about what it's like to be a stepmother. I think I spend more time writing about bugs and NPR than I have about what it's like to raise two boys who are not my own. I'd love to tell you it's because there's really nothing to write about, because as anyone with children, let alone stepchildren,  knows, kids always provide more food for thought than anyone needs in about three lives.

So, today, here is is. My very first post on the art of stepmothering.

What inspired me to write this blog, today, is that on Saturday something happened that hasn't, literally, happened in years. Up until about four years ago, the boys had the habit of, every once in a while, dropping their bio-mom into a conversation, preferably whenever the conversation involved people we barely knew. And no matter how zen I try to be about the whole, "there is another, more real mother in the picture", it used to drive me crazy. Husband-dear and I would be talking to, for instance, a new couple at church about the service, and Ozzie or Jimmie would interject, "My mother is a nurse", or "My mom works here and here" or another statement completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. Now although I totally understood their need to reassure themselves as well as the people around them that a) I was not their real mother, and b) their real mother did some pretty cool stuff too, it would just make me feel somehow unaccepted. Especially since I make sure whenever meeting new people that they know that I am actually the kids' super-evil wicked stepmom. But they were little kids, we understood their need to reassure their position in the family, so we let it go. And then last Saturday, our now not-so-young Jimmie, did the exact same thing. Out of the blue, somewhere in the middle of a conversation with a person we'd just met about the local music scene, he mentioned where his mother worked. The statement made no sense, had no place in the conversation, and I was just flabbergasted. I let it go, but it's stung ever since, and made me realize that although you at one point cease to be a new mother, just like you cease to be the mother of a preschooler, or a newlywed, or the new kid in town, you never, ever cease to be the stepmother.

That realization has the tendency to come up at the most unexpected times. When you're talking to your sister in law about teaching your children not to talk back, and she tells you, "But you wouldn't be that strict with your own children", for instance. Or when you tell your students "your" children are your stepchildren, and they tell you, "that's really not the same". Or when your extended family doesn't send your stepchildren anything for their birthday because they're not really "your" children. Little things that make you realize that it doesn't matter that you have to try ten times harder than any "conventional" mom, and that any rejection comes on ten times stronger too (on account of, you've been trying so hard), you will never really join the club of "real mommies".

I realize the whole line between "your" children and "stepchildren" is a contentious one. They're not "my" children. They're bio-mom's and husband-dear's children, a fact I love to point out whenever one of them needs help with something and husband-dear and I are happily ensconced on the couch watching a movie. Usually, I'm OK with that. Life is complicated enough as it is, and having a stepmother and a stepfather thrown in the mix would be enough to confuse any kid. And "my" kids are awesome about it. There's never any "You're not my mother!", or "Well, at mom's house we don't have to..." around here. So, usually, I'm a happy camper of a stepmom. But there are days when it's a little harder. Days when bio-mom calls five times in an hour, or when the kids can't stop talking about something they did with bio-mom and the super-awesome new stepdad, or when, like Saturday, one of them has to remind me that, hey, lady, you are not my mother. It's days like that when I really think someone should write a fairytale about poor, misunderstood, and under-appreciated stepmothers who just want to go to the ball, be beautiful, marry Prince Charming and then sleep for one hundred years. Oh wait...

Did anyone say sleep?