StepUniverse

It's the little things

2005-07-08T04:35:00.000-07:00

The tiny ways that life in Step Universe complicates matters: yesterday was tie-dye Tshirt day at camp for the girls -- and minutes before we left I discovered that all of T's white shirts had migrated to her dad's apartment in the city. So I ran to a children's consignment shop near camp and begged them to open early and sell me a three-dollar white shirt with doggies on it, which I ran back to camp in the nick of time.

The big ways it complicates matters are sometimes too hard to contemplate, let alone blog about.

Maybe some contempletive time over the weekend. One can only hope.

It's been real

2005-06-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

For a fitting farewell to our favorite watering hole, go to www.baristanet.com. Goodbye, Seven Hills.

To The Buyers

2005-06-29T07:59:00.000-07:00

Dear new owners of our house,

To think that you are stepmama readers! Did you find the house first or the blog first? Either way, you know how much work and love we've put into this house, and my husband and I are thrilled to pass it on to you. Welcome. This was the first home of our very happy life together as a new family -- may it bring the same to you.

So glad that you liked the wreath!

And a special hello to Moose, your lab mix, from our two dogs, Artemus and Freddy.

We loved how much you loved this house. Thank you for telling us.

Champagne all around!

Tonight

2005-06-28T07:19:00.000-07:00

Optomists that we must be to keep the machine of our stepfamily moving forward, we painted the girls' bedrooms at the new house. We asked them what colors they wanted: D requested "the color of a peach smoothie" and T requested "the color of Simba, The Lion King." I think we actually succeeded.

The new house stands empty. My great-uncle's boarder of 10 years finally moved out, and it waits for us.

We open bids for this house tonight at 6:30 (the plural is again optomistic). Will it all work?

Arrgh

2005-06-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

After all of our hard work getting this house ready to sell (my husband was installing cabinet doors twenty minutes before the realtors' open house on Friday) -- the real estate brokers made a huge mistake and listed our house in the wrong town! The newspapers have it all wrong! Now instead of having the most affordable home on the market in one of the most desirable towns in the state, we are listed as having the most expensive house in a different town all together. No! No! Forces beyond our control will ensure that our house doesn't sell!

We have so much riding on this sale -- if we don't do well, we can't afford to buy my uncle's old house. If we don't do well, we can't pay off our debt. Couldn't this have happened to someone who can afford it?

Theory of Everything

2005-06-24T08:22:00.000-07:00

The bad news: looks like the Supreme Court isn't going to save the Seven Hills from the wrecking ball after their big-bucks-loving decision on eminent domain yesterday. I'm shaking my head at the turn of the world -- twenty-five years ago, who dreamed that Sandra Day O'Connor would be the justice who spoke up for the little folk?

The good news: Corporation for Public Broadcasting still stands. This is personal: NPR's All Things Considered gave me a huge break by putting a commentary of mine on the air two years ago. I'll fish up the link someday in case someone out there is reading and wants to listen. Too bad that most of the debate over CPB's future took place on public broadcasting stations and not through commercial media -- as my dear friend, a public radio producer in North Carolina, says, having the debate over public broadcasting air on public radio is a bit like having Haliburton debate the war in Iraq.

Here's an idea: Haliburton can buy my house under the auspices of eminent domain and build a public radio broadcasting station. Go ahead, H-people: the open house is today. I'll throw in the wreath for free.

The Domestic Arts

2005-06-22T06:22:00.000-07:00

This stepmama must speak up about a certain ex-husband who thinks he can get away with not registering the car that has been unregistered for six months because he has decided that I want to sell it back to the dealer. Uh-uh. He's going to Motor Vehicle, yessirree.

Isn't it just exemplary of the human condition that I turn to the domestic arts only in time to leave my house? Last night I planted window boxes for the first time in my foliage-challenged life. The first one leans to the left (as do I, maybe it will be a secret sign for liberals to buy my house); the second one strikes a better balance. I was thoroughly shocked to wake up this morning and find that the teeny red and white begonias which looked half dead in their little egg-crate thingee from the garden center had actually opened up and bloomed happily. Soil, water: it works!

T-minus four and counting

2005-06-20T04:59:00.000-07:00

House sale week. This means that by Thursday afternoon we must have a cute, charming, walk-right-in-with-your-suitcase-and-your-toothbrush house. A happily ever after house -- for someone else.

Cute can be achieved through judicious use of Ikea products on sale for 50% off regular price. Wreaths seem to be a major factor in cute. Pretending we don't have two dogs and two girls seems also to be an important factor in setting up our house, although the irony is that the cutest things we actually have are the two dogs and the two girls. Too messy, too real. We need fake cute in order to get some real buyers.

Please, buyers, come our way!

Fathers

2005-06-19T04:38:00.000-07:00

Father's Day in the StepUniverse. My daughter made three Father's day presents at school: one for her dad, one for her stepfather, and one for my father. Her pre K classroom teacher sent home a note earlier this week: "because of the variety of family structures we have in our classroom, we've talked with the children about Father's Day as a celebration of all the important men in our lives." Thank you, Montclair Community Pre-K Center. Makes up for the other day when a woman I know asked me where the girls would be in kindergarten next year; when I told her D. would be one town over where her mother lives, she said, "Oh, that's good. It means you won't have to "explain" things to everyone all the time." Sheesh. I'm sure there will be a variety of family structures in kindergarten too.

We're all together till one pm, then T's dad comes to see her for a big three hours.

Happy important men in our lives day, dear readers.

Head for the Hills

2005-06-17T05:35:00.000-07:00

I just completed the manuscript for the book of essays I'm editing (on stepfamilies, natch!) and turned it in to my publisher, my agent is shopping around my young adult novel, I've been asked to write essays for several anthologies, I'm registering my daughter for kindergarten, my husband and I are scrambling to finish our house and fix up the new house, my husband is starting a new business from scratch -- and all I can think about is my annoying ex and his annoying lies about the annoying car. How very annoying.

Here's a shout out to anyone living nearby (for locale see www.baristanet.com): The Seven Hills Restaurant on Glenwood Avenue in Bloomfield is about to close its doors after 35 years in business due to major gentrification overhaul by the local government (more on above mentioned baristanet blog). Whenever my husband and I have a date, we end up at the bar -- it's as old school as old school gets. Frank and Dean and Mel and Tony on the jukebox. Brass elephant heads support the fake wood (formica) bar. Both of the bartenders are named Lisa -- and both are stepmamas. We talk. We bond. We drink.

A senior citizen apartment complex lies within stumbling distance, and we've come to know the regulars: Jeannie, who claims she's 59 and maintains that the helmet of hair on her head that slips sideways after her third Dewars on the rocks is not a wig; Madge, who regales everyone with her tales of radiation, chemo, and Tylenol III between drags on her cigarettes; Silent Dorothy and her Silent Husband who eat dinner and drink rose. Stu the mattress salesman at Sleepy's who thinks he's 39 (see Jeannie above) and recently cheated on his too-nice girlfriend, so he now shows up without a girlfriend and with a vest pocket full of stogies. Lisa and Lisa fill us in on all the gossip.

Where will everyone go? Where will Jeannie pick "Fly Me to the Moon" off the jukebox and waltz around the bar pretending a lover is leading her in his strong arms? Where will the bowling league have their awards dinner once The Vincenza Room is no longer available for parties?

Car Trouble

2005-06-16T13:01:00.000-07:00

Ex won't pick up the car that he owns, is responsible for, and got me pulled over for driving because -- get this -- it isn't registered and he doesn't want to risk driving it. Well, why isn't it registered? And who had to risk driving it because she didn't have the legal authority to register it herself? And why did his license get suspended anyhow? And what's a physiologist? (see May archives for more on that). Now I just got a message from him claiming that because the divorce settlement states that I have use of the car, and because I've been making the payments, the car is legally my problem not his. But I'm still not the legal owner. I can't register it, I can't claim the title, I can't do anything. He claims that I'm dumping my problems on him. How can it be if I'm pulled over and the police are prepared to tow the car and arrest me because they think I'm him, that the car is my problem?

Our new car rocks, because it's ours. Okay, technically it belongs to the Nissan dealership because we leased it, but I've decided that car salespeople are more honest and reliable than my ex-husband. Plus it has plenty of room for to transport all the contents of this house and dump them in the empty new-old house so when we put this house on the market next week (Glen Ridge New Jersey-area residents take note: house going on the market!)

Home at Last

2005-06-13T03:35:00.000-07:00

We spent yesterday working on our house to get it ready to sell. Since T. and I moved in only four months ago, much of my stuff was still in boxes -- a gift, it turns out. Went through the girls' bedrooms with giant garbage bags.

My husband is a carpenter. He tiled the bathroom walls and still needs to make doors for the kitchen cabinets he built. We wouldn't be moving except for the house of our dreams -- of my dreams since I was 20 -- is now ours. My great-uncle Irving died just a few days before my husband and I got married. His daughter, my cousin, is selling us the house that he and my Aunt Hope lived in for 50 years.

More about that house soon. This will be the fifth time T. and I have moved in the two-plus years since my ex left. T. is five. She knows all about boxes. This, however, will be the last. Home at last.

Stepping in Gum

2005-06-12T06:33:00.000-07:00

This is the first weekend in two months that T's father has her -- and (so far) hasn't cancelled. Must be guilt: three days ago after I dropped T. off at school, I was pulled over by two police cars on Bloomfield Avenue, who were prepared to tow my car and arrest me because, to my dismay but not surprise, my ex-husband's drivers license has been suspended again. He has never done the paperwork to turn the car over to me, no matter how much I ask. Therefore, I couldn't renew the registration -- another thing I've told him to do. Didn't.

The police were kind to me, realizing that I'm in a pickle beyond my control. Then my husband had the brilliant idea that instead of pestering the ex to do something he'll never do, let's just drop the illegal car on him, I'll stop making all the payments (my name is no where on the documents, so my credit won't be in trouble). Yesterday my husband and I leased a new car, for less per month than I've been paying. One less way that ex-husband can intrude on new marriage, new life.

When you have a stepfamily, the ex can be like stepping in gum. You think you've scraped it all off, but every so often you lift your shoe and there you see the dirty, stringy, sticky tendrils that subbornly tether you to the curb.

After the Bomb: Post Nuclear Family

2005-06-05T04:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning I was listening to my favorite radio program, Studio 360, http://www.wnyc.org/studio360/ as I drove to the house we are about to move in to. The show was about the concept of "cuteness" and the story that struck me was about the current Japanese pop culture phenomenon of extreme cuteness (think "Hello, Kitty"). The commentators attributed it in large part to the obliteration of Japan's ancient culture and political dominance when the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leaving behind a child of a nation, to be reborn and reformed with a deliberate avoidance of what happened before. Not thinking the unthinkable.

Stepfamilies are formed after the bomb is dropped on at least one nation/family, leaving behind ashes and waste. A stepfamily is a new child coming from a history of destruction -- every day brings choices about how to handle the losses that came before. They are there, lurking, no matter how cute the new stepfamily looks in the happy photos.

On the international cultural stage, the Japanese method of coping has served them well. Germany never came up with Hello, Kitty or anything especially cute, and we don't seem to have any international German cultural crazes at the moment....

Not to push the analogy too hard -- the macro isn't the micro no matter how hard you try to shove it into that little container -- but it did set me thinking.

Hyena laugh

2005-06-03T09:30:00.000-07:00

So T.'s father will deign to see her tonight, but not without a healthy (sickly) dose of anger at me for the fact that when he canceled yesterday I laughed hysterically into the phone, then hung up. Really, it was either the hyena laugh or a court date, so I think he should be grateful.

We have D. tonight, though, so there's no break, no chance to actually converse with my husband. I'm learning that it's a bigger marital stress to have the girls on separate nights than it is to have them together. We're so new that the issue always arises: do we have equal parenting responsibilities when it's one of ours, not both? Are we supposed to resent each other for taking a back seat to the other's parental dominance or are we supposed to be grateful? And what on earth do the children want?

I haven't even begun to discuss the step dogs....

Half the Time

2005-06-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

T's father cancelled on her again today. Fortunately, I've learned the hard, sad lesson that he is never to be trusted to keep his word, so I held off telling her that her daddy would see her later.

There is a strain on my marriage because of T's father's constant absence. What must it be like for my husband to see his own daughter only half the time that he sees mine? T. has the world's greatest stepfather. I'm just trying to help her muddle through it. My own temper is starting to fray, turn tinny and harsh.

What's A Physiologist?

2005-05-31T18:07:00.000-07:00

D. came along on the trip to my parents' house -- much better for me because two five year olds can entertain each other in between bickering and I can focus on things like driving, and wondering what a physiologist is and why my ex-husband declared he spent $6,200 on one in our tax return for last year. The final joint tax return with him; 2005 will be the first joint tax return with my new husband.

From finance to finesse: today's step issue at my parents' house was that we were going to meet my dad at his office (he's a professor) and he realized, with a gasp, that while his desk is cluttered with photos of T. and my sister's daughter, E., he has nary a one of D. "What will she think?" he asks me. "Will she feel left out?" My question to him is why, if he's so worried about her feelings, doesn't he have a photo of her? No offer to procure one is forthcoming. I suggest, since I have two children now, that he might want to adjust his decor. He agrees to plant a photo of D. on his desk for the visit, but doesn't go as far as claiming he wants a permanent reminder of my second marriage, my new family, in his presence. D. and T. are too busy looking out the window at the pristine collegiate courtyard when we visit -- so different from anything on our busy street -- to even notice. But I wonder anyhow about the subtle, or not so subtle, distinctions and rankings my father draws. Will it be this way always?

Folding Kleenex into Swans

2005-05-30T07:41:00.000-07:00

Even a quick overnight to my parents' house on the holiday weekend is like making origami birds out of Kleenex when the StepUniverse is involved: my daughter and I are definitely going. My husband's ex-wife is supposed to drop my stepdaughter off sometime this morning. My husband can't go because he has too much work -- but if I bring my stepdaughter, he won't see her again till the weekend. If I don't bring my stepdaughter, he can't go to work. But he still can't come with us because we won't return until tomorrow after lunch. My own ex-husband is supposed to take T. on Tuesday nights but has developed this rationale that because he saw her on Saturday, Tuesday is optional (?). So we wait till the last minute to decide if my stepdaughter, D., comes with us or stays home.

One thing I've learned how to do as a stepmama is wait. Since patience has always been my weakest suit, I suppose it's good for me.

A Memorial Day musing.

2005-05-30T06:25:00.000-07:00

Yours, mine, ours...stepfamily

Whirlpool

2005-05-29T08:21:00.000-07:00

My ex-husband took our daughter. T., overnight for the first time in six weeks. When we first split, T. would weep every time I left her with him -- now she goes willingly, apparently more willingly than he takes her. He is sick, always sick, now a 42 year old man felled by mono, six months ago a hernia, six months before that a kidney issue that had him convinced he had cancer and was dying. I quit my job that time, having no reason to doubt him, envisioning the death of my 4 year old's father and subsequent traumas, thinking I needed to be home to get her through, borrowing money from my parents till I got another job (a book contract this time, stars aligned). He had nothing, but couldn't see T. for two months that time because he was so emotionally traumatized by the thought that he could have had cancer. Or maybe because all the painkillers he took, then took again, then needed some more, rendered him glassy-eyed, inert.

What is illness in this context? I imagine his illness like a whirlpool, in which competing forces of physical weakness, emotional vulnerability, and a big head of steam from his anger that anyone needs to depend on him, swirl together and create a deep, powerful hole that sucks down everything in its wake. Does he need these breakdowns in order to announce that he can only be a father if he gets to stop whenever he wants?

I can't hear any of his excuses when he calls and cancels over and over again. I hold the phone far away from my ear because the sound of his voice alone makes my head explode.

What will T. make of all this when she is a little older? How angry will she be with me for the ways I reacted, or didn't react, or didn't protect her, or protected her too much?

Wishing

2005-05-25T07:41:00.000-07:00

Last month I brought my daughter, new stepdaughter and new husband to a big family party held in a conference room at the Marriott Residence Inn in Glenpointe, New Jersey - - right over the George Washington Bridge from New York. We had about 40 people attending, pouring ice water from sweaty pitchers, throwing strawberries. The girls, who are both five, ran shrieking through the lobby until they found a fountain by the bar. They rushed back to me, begging for coins to throw in the well so they could make a wish. My stepdaughter was especially eager: "Anne, Anne, pleeeeeeeease can I have some money?" I fished two pennies out of my wallet. She immediately grabbed one, threw it in the water, and announced loudly enough for the bartender around the corner to hear: "I wish that my mommy was still married to my daddy!" I think my daughter wished she was a boy -- an equally impossible scenario -- but I didn't hear much after that. Okay, hah, hah, it was funny. And understandable, especially given that my stepdaughter was confronted with 40 new people allegedly part of her family. But I still wanted to demand my money back. At least she could have asked for her father's penny.

Here's what I know: she needs to test me. She needs to know that I'm not going anywhere, no matter how much she pushes. I need to stay present. I need to take nothing personally, but give everything personally. I love her, she loves me, but I am a foreign object. I'm no Carol Brady, but I'm no Wicked Queen either.

This is the first year, the first months, of my new stepfamily. Will love and good intentions be enough?