My Boys

C's kids are my boys. I didn't give birth to them, but through circumstance and their sheer awesomeness I have grown so attached that my heart couldn't possibly grow any bigger to accommodate more love. Except that it does. Every day. They break my heart with their sweetness and sometimes they just plain break my heart.

The frustrating thing about being a stepmother, a member of the "tribal village" or a "vital parental figure" to a child not of your womb is that you get the full-body joy and pain of raising children - NOW with added boundaries! An already difficult road is made muddy, sometimes.

Being a mother myself, and having the shoe on the other foot with a former lover and his wife, I'm very sensitive to this. I don't want to be called a stepmother because of my own sensitivity to the back-end of that word. I am lucky in the fact that C and I share our perspective on this and our view on the collaborative aspect of his children and my child vs. the weight of responsibility is very similar. We are letting this family grow in the way that is right for us.

But.

(There is always a but.)

When things go awry (or things go awry in the other house that makes up the world of your family) you are stuck with biting your tongue till it bleeds, as LOM so rightly put it, ages and ages ago. And that is tough. You have to live with the decisions that are made, but aside from discussions with your partner half of the equation, you cannot control the outcome.

I was thinking about this frustration and my diplomatically expressed opinions about these precious souls for whom I feel so deeply, and it made me think: Perhaps this will be good preparation for surrendering to the helplessness of loving these children when they are adolescents and adults.

To learn to love fierce and well without control or agenda. That must be valuable! Oh, the difficult and varied avalanche of gifts the road less taken heaps upon your soul.

My Sister Mother

I live in K's old house that she used to share with, what is now, my family, too. We gathered as a tribe on Christmas Eve for tamales and white russians, exchanging and laughter. Children, children everywhere. It was joyful and strange, my skin still stretching to accommodate all the new love and my throat still swallowing all our histories, gone before.

The lights and candles shone as we sat together on her piano bench that still lives in my dining room, sharing our thoughts and mutual admiration.

One time, at a party many moons ago, before I'd spent more than a handful of minutes with K, someone made a gossipy observation. It wasn't meant in an unkind way, but I became silent with defensiveness. I thought: "You can't talk that way about the mother of my boys!" It startled me, then.

I spent several years immersed in Orthodox Judaism. Someone used to say to me that "In Judaism, the Mother is everything." It was a sentiment I heard reflected in a Rosh Hashanah service some time later. The rabbi intoned that the men present were there for women: their mothers, their wives. At the time, I found it to be somewhat sexist. I thought: "Isn't that a classic move, we make you second class citizens, then tell you you're the reason we exist."

Now, I'm not so sure. I believe that the richness of my connection with K is greatly responsible for this integrated family life that is such a blessing to me, to my partner, to hers and to all our children. It feels as though the ancient wisdom of sisterhood informs my own tribal lore. And, while I do not pretend to know the exact alchemy that has produced my blessed luck, I like the idea that K and I have conspired together to be the architects of our family.

We are not the only participants, but it often feels as though we are the origin of the tribal life-force. I find myself mulling over the role of women in family personality. And, wondering if maybe the rabbi had a point.

Proper Care and Feeding of Ghosts

On Halloween, the ghosts were rampant. K and I finally got a chance to speak about the nature of family and our excitement and trepidation of the future. Today, I emailed her for the first time on my own, sending her photos of our tribe and just acknowledging her. It felt so good to me.

In my second response to her, I referenced Frost's The Road Not Taken. It sums up the experience I've had since I veered off the traveled road.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.