My son loves me. I know he does, because he says "Mama" so many times each day that I have seriously considered changing my own name to "Sally" much like my own mother did. OK. Well, that's not exactly proof. When I picked him up after he spent a week away in Charleston with his father's family, the first thing he said after, "Mama!" was "That's the prettiest smile you've ever smiled," as he touched my cheek. And, besides, whenever I tell him how much I love him, he claims to love me back. That boy loves his Mama.
So, you can imagine my being taken aback when just over a year ago, as we were wrapping up our bedtime prayers with the list of everyone queued up for blessings, my son, who loves *me*, started claiming blessings for his stepmom, his stepsister and his stepbrother. Huh? Me thinks to myself, "Uh..your Daddy ain't married." But, instead, I ask, just for confirmation, "Now, um...Remind me. Who's your stepmother?" And, he says her name. This other woman in his life. Seriously, the words, "Do you love her?" almost escaped from my lips. But, I played it cool.
My co-parent (or Baby Daddy, as we sometimes call each other affectionately and politically incorrectly), his girlfriend and her children had been living together for about six months when this little glitch in my program occurred. And, please understand that it had happened just weeks after I had been set up by my son's father in a most uncomfortable way. One afternoon, as we were making a kid exchange at Waffle House (classy, not; but convenient), he tells me that his girlfriend's daughter, has something to ask me. And, right there, cornered in a giant Waffle House parking lot, pinned between Hassan, my beloved Nissan Sentra, and her Acura, I find myself having to face...well, look down at...a nervous 10-year-old, too uncomfortable to even look up from the ground, asking me if she could come to my son's house, since he always comes to hers. Whoa. I look helplessly at that man who fathered my child, think to myself, "Does her Mama know she's asking me this?", and say, "Of course, I'll talk to your mother, and we'll figure out a good day."
It was probably a month or two later when I invited her to go to a play with us and to spend the night on December 23rd. You can imagine the email exchange between her mother and me. Well, maybe you can't, because it was full of nothing but gratitude. She was thankful that I had thought about her daughter, and I was thankful to be able to have connected with a woman who was spending a whole lot of quality time with my child. We both were ecstatic about the complete absence of the drama that most of us accept as a given in situations like this.
And, over the course of this year, we have become partners in many ways. There are bumps...less about us than about them and how their journey together will affect all of our children. But, even after a recent "disruption in communication" between the two of them, I found myself reaching out just to say that I care about our kids...and, "I hope you are well." And, I found her reaching back.
Here's the thing. If it hadn't been for our children deciding that they were family, we would not have stepped into this awkward space of cobbled-together familial titles like bonus mom and myson'sfather'sgirlfriend'sson and aunt/mom/something-or-other (Really, what do you call your mother's boyfriend's son's mother?). They were thrust into this mess by parents who for whatever reasons have chosen not to commit or not to commit fully to one another.
They struggled for a while. And I worried...a lot. But, in the end, or the beginning depending upon how you look at it, they chose to call this a family when none of us were willing. They chose to commit so much that they have, on their own, dropped the "step" prefix when they refer to one another. So, in our minds, we now have no choice but to be the mothers, the women, they demand we be. And, my son's father? He has no choice but to stay out of the way of a perfect storm of coordinating schedules, cross-referencing gift purchases and, yes, just a wee bit of commiseration.
Don't get me wrong. Like everyone, we have issues. We are still figuring this thing out. I am still waiting to see if they will weather the storms and hoping, secretly, that they will. I imagine that she and I both are still uncertain about the boundaries of our own relationship. Our friends and families aren't exactly feeling it, although they try.
But, still, my son's other woman and I stand together to say that this is possible. We are not special. We are regular women bonded by our decision to follow our children's lead through a relationship maze we have crafted. And, to us, it is clear that they know the way.
