Non-Breeder: The Reluctant Stepmother
Learning to play house.
by Lisa Selin Davis
April 9, 2007
I began to realize that I had different ideas about what was best — different not only from Kim's mother, but from Rich. For all that lacked in my childhood, I agreed with my mother's basic approaches: whole foods, very little television, more high culture and less mass culture. I objected to the morning viewings of Cinderella, the Barbies, the Devil's Tower of Christmas presents consuming a corner of the living room. Rich's miserable childhood and relentless generosity made him want to give her everything: junk food, TV, stuffed animals.
Animals, yeah, I said. But 400 of them?
I stealthily inserted my values into their rituals: replacing the chicken nuggets with health food versions, snapping off the TV. I told the kid some of the funny things in my head — how I didn't agree with messages in her fairytales, in which a woman remains helpless until rescued by a man. "You mean she doesn't help herself?" Kim asked.
"Yes," I said. "Women need to learn to help themselves."
After that, when Kim saw a subway ad for Xena, standing tall with her sword, she'd say, "There's a princess who helps herself." I felt better when he asked me to marry him. I'd be a real stepmom, and not just Daddy's girlfriend.Satisfaction circulated inside me, the way a parent must feel when the kid scores a goal or aces a solo in the Christmas pageant: I'd gotten a four-year old to think critically, put her on the path to a PhD in media studies.
What I settled on, after much trial and error, was a kind of big sister stance. My job was to be the grown-up in charge when Daddy wasn't around. I could enforce the rules, not make up new ones. I had some power, but I also indulged in sweetly devilish undermining.
Rich was less sure of my new philosophy. "I have the final say," he told me. "I'll listen to your objections, but in the end, it's up to me."
While I loved Rich's reasonable stance and endless well of love for the kid, I felt a faint sting of rejection, both from him and leftover from childhood. I had thought stepmothering would illuminate my parents' and stepparents' decision-making process. It only made it more confounding. Did my father ever intervene, soften my stepmother's regime? He'd preferred my stepmother to me. I suppose on some level, selfish as it was, I wanted to be Rich's preference.
I felt better when he asked me to marry him. At least I'd be a real stepmom, and not just Daddy's girlfriend. Our engagement was unofficial, as Rich's divorce hadn't gone through. He had Kim present me with a small velvet box. I didn't wear the ring. "It's too big," I said.
Then Kim left for three weeks, off to Japan with her mom to practice what she'd learned in Japanese school. It was strange in the house without her; Richard and I had nothing to argue about. Something tugged on my insides. I recognized that I missed her, and it startled me. Love wasn't a shade plant anymore. It had blossomed.
Kim returned just in time for Rich's sister's wedding, to which his ex-wife was also invited. I appreciated this twenty-first-century arrangement, so different from the contention that boiled in my own blended family. We were grown-ups. We could share.
©2007 Lisa Selin Davis and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Lisa Selin Davis is the author of the novel Belly (Little Brown) and a freelance journalist. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, Interior Design, New York and This Old House. |
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