Dear Dad: On the Occasion of Your 70th Birthday, I Want to Say Thank You...

Dear Dad:

On the occasion of your 70th birthday, I want to say thank you...

...for working hard in the steel mill for all those years so that you could support your family and send me to college.

...for taking me to Disney World for my 5th birthday!

...for being an excellent dance partner.

...for coming to my rescue when I was scared during a thunderstorm, even though it meant breaking your foot.

...for making sure there was always some time to have fun together.

...for your service to our country when you were a young man.

...for giving me an appreciation of country life.

...for loving my mother, and showing me through your example what love is.

...for always being the person I can call when I have car problems.

...for coaching me and going with me to the dealership to buy my first car, which I drove out to Los Angeles.

...for having a bit of a mischievous side.

...for having an excellent sense of humor, and showing me how not to take myself too seriously.

...for being the kind of guy who can rock a pair of suspenders.

...for showing me through your actions how important it is to help other people and to be of service.

...for traveling to the far sides of the country to visit me.

...for taking me to and picking me up from the airport, endlessly.

...for giving me so many birthdays to share with you!

With Much Love,
Your Daughter,
Amy

The Rewards of Being a Childfree Stepmom

Today - September 16th - is National Stepfamily Day. Did you know there was an actual day to bring awareness to and celebrate stepfamilies? Me neither - and I'm part of a stepfamily!

I suspect one big reason why we don't celebrate National Stepfamily Day is because, for many stepfamilies, there is little to celebrate. It makes sense, if you think about. Stepfamilies are generally formed because of divorce, and divorce is one of the most unpleasant things on earth, so why would we want to celebrate something that is a result of divorce?

Well - I want to celebrate!

I'm a childfree stepmom, which means that I have chosen to have no biological children. Being childfree has it's own set of challenges, the most basic being a lack of understanding. I read a marvelous article on nymag.com yesterday - 25 Famous Women on Childlessness. If you want to get a good idea of how I feel about not having children, I definitely recommend checking it out. They hit the nail on the head.

So - in honor of National Stepfamily Day, I've decided today is a great day to focus on the positive aspects of being a childfree stepmom. There are things I love about having someone else's children (and not my own) in my life, and I think it's about time I paid tribute to that.

Having the 'kid experience' without all the responsibility.

I choose to be childfree in part because I don't want the full time responsibility of raising a child. Having stepkids means I get to have kids in my life, but I'm not the primary parent who is making all the choices about their welfare. Instead, I get what I think of as the 'good stuff' - learning what makes them tick, hearing about their days and what's new at school, celebrating birthdays and holidays, shopping for the presents. What I don't have to do is discipline, drive them to school, pack their lunches, talk to their teachers, teach them to drive - the list goes on and on. I get to know them as people without all the responsibilities that the bio parents have. I think that's pretty cool, and it helps me build a unique relationship with them.

Having the time and space to pursue my own interests without guilt.

Parenting is hard, there is no doubt about that. Every day is a new challenge, from getting them to eat something healthy to dealing with their performance at school. But not being the biological parent means that generally the onus is off me to solve those problems. I only get involved when it's clear I need to be involved - I do believe too many cooks in the kitchen can be a problem in stepfamilies, especially when the bio parents have different parenting styles. The kids already have so many different voices to listen to and to please, they don't need me adding mine to the mix to make things even more confusing. So I stay out of most of those parenting issues. The flipside is that I have extra time to pursue my own interests. My identity is not wholly wrapped up in being a parent. I think part of my success as a stepmom is knowing when my husband needs personal time with the kids without me and not feeling excluded because of it. I simply see it as time that I can spend with my friends or taking a class or gardening or whatever I happen to be into that week.

Being in touch with what it's like to be a kid today.

As a childfree woman pushing 40, it would be easy to be disconnected to younger generations. But having a unique relationship with my stepkids means I get to see the world through their eyes. I have long discussions with my stepdaughter at the kitchen table. I ask lots of questions about her classes and her friends and her thoughts about life. I think it's so important just to give kids a chance to talk and be heard, and I like providing that for them. Being a good listener, and offering up advice when needed, gives me a perspective about them and about the world they are growing up in that I think I wouldn't have if I were a biological parent. I like knowing about what kids are into these days, and seeing how things have changed and how they've stayed the same.

It gives me a different perspective about my husband.

I would never have met my husband if he hadn't had kids. He would be off in some foreign country doing international aid work, most likely. Instead, because of his school age kids, he was here in Los Angeles when I moved here. When we first dated, the kids weren't there most of the time so I got to know him as an adult. Once our relationship got serious and I saw the kids more and more, I got to know him as a dad and to see a totally different side of him. I find it deeply moving how much he loves his kids and what he's willing to do for them and it has made our relationship that much more meaningful to me.

It keeps me on my toes with endless surprises.

I'm not always in the know about when I'm going to see the kids or the minutiae of what's going on in their lives. This certainly keeps me on my toes and teaches me to be flexible. There are also tremendously rewarding surprises, such as last Christmas when my husband and my stepdaughter went to Indiana with me to spend the holiday with my family. My stepkids don't normally give me presents on holidays (I don't expect them to), but this Christmas the two of them gave me something special - a necklace that had been given to them from their grandmother, my husband's mother. I was totally flabbergasted and genuinely moved by their thoughtfulness. 

It stretches my heart in ways I never thought possible.

Having kids around has altered my perspective of the world. When they are here at my house, their needs come first. When they are not here, I wonder what they are up to and think about how I can be a better stepmom the next time I see them. Having them in my life has taught me to open my heart and has challenged me to attain higher ideals. I want to be a good role model for them, and that means working on myself so I can be a better person for them. I've learned better how to deal with situations I have no control over and how to handle some pretty explosive emotions. I've learned that my heart has space in it for them. The heart really is a muscle - the more you work it, the stronger it becomes. 

Are you part of a stepfamily? What are some of the things you enjoy about your role? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. And if you're looking for a great resource for stepmoms, check out StepMom Magazine (and yes - that's me on the cover!). This magazine has truly provided wisdom and advice when I needed it most, and it is always presented in a positive, problem-solving way.

The Great Bedroom Switcheroo of 1985

I played the bass in Junior High, until I fell down an entire flight of stairs with it at a concert and broke it in half.
That seemed like as good a time to quit as any.

I was so excited when I was in fifth grade because my brother decided to switch bedrooms with me. I don’t know why. I had the tiny, closet-like bedroom and his bedroom was much bigger. His was also farther away from Mom and Dad’s room, which really wasn’t that far because our house was tiny, it was maybe like five feet farther away, but it didn’t share a wall. My closet bedroom was right next to Mom and Dad’s room and didn’t have a closet. But he wanted to switch. I won't question his motives.

Shortly after we did the switch my parents said I could redecorate it. I was SO EXCITED. But we couldn’t tell my grandpa. He would want to help and I guess he wasn’t particularly great at carpentry. One night when he was over for dinner (he came over for dinner a lot, as I recall), I had forgotten I wasn’t supposed to tell him and I was so excited to see the progress that was being made that I blurted out at the table how my room was looking. That opened up a whole can of worms. I remember my mom and dad giving me the stink eye. I remember having to all get up from the dinner table to inspect my Dad’s work. I don’t remember if Grandpa ended up helping or not.

I decided to go full-out princess with my “new room”. My favorite color at the time was baby blue, so I chose baby blue carpet and white paneling for the walls (my family was really big into the paneling, it was in every room except the bathroom). My dad installed a drop ceiling – you know, the kind you find in office buildings with fluorescent lights overhead. We went to Sears to pick out new furniture, and I picked out the set that every girl in the 1980s had, it’s white with gold trim and looks vaguely French Country/Midwest Chic. You can now find it at garage sales across America. What was most exciting was my canopy bed. For some reason, having a canopy bed made me feel like I was rich.

As I got older and started to outgrow the princess look, I started filling the walls with posters. I know for sure I had a Martin Luther King, Jr, poster in my room, I think perhaps it had a quote from his “I Have a Dream” speech on it. Where I got it is anybody’s guess since I grew up in one of the whitest cities in US. I likely put up the posters from all my high school plays. I can be fairly certain I also adorned the walls with tear-out pictures from magazines like Metal Edge. I was in love with Sebastian Bach from Skid Row, so no doubt he was somewhere up there among the mélange, rubbing elbows with Jesus from Godspell.

Although the furniture has disappeared from the room (most likely donated to someone in my family or a family friend), the room still has the baby blue carpet, the white paneling, and the fluorescent, drop-ceiling lighting which I have come to loathe, and which has made me really sensitive to lighting ever since. The carpet even still has the big stain/bleach mark where I had accidentally projectile-vomitted late one night when suffering from the flu, almost immediately after the carpet was installed. That barf went everywhere except in the toilet. All over the floor, the walls, the furniture, sprayed down the hallway as I dashed to the bathroom. Not one drop made it to its desired location.

Now when I go home to visit my parents, I stay in the closet bedroom. My room is now Dad’s office and a place to put things that don’t otherwise have a home. I end up leaving every time with a few new bruises from bumping into furniture that has been squeezed into a shoebox-sized space. There’s just enough room to put my suitcase on the floor, but not enough room to step around it. You have to step over it. You’d think in such a small space the furniture would have nice, rounded corners, conducive to accidental human contact. It doesn’t. It’s all sharp corners and unyielding surfaces. It’s a full-time lesson in grace and agility.

I have daydreams about redecorating my old room for my parents. I could take them to Sears and they could pick out new furniture. I’d take off the paneling, spackle the walls and paint. I’d rip out the drop ceiling and install less seizure-inducing lighting. I’d turn the closet bedroom into a cozy office for my dad, a place where he’d enjoy browsing CraigsList for used riding lawnmowers (my dad collects lawnmowers like other people collect angel figurines or WWII memorabilia).

But for now the room remains the same, stuck in a perpetual “transitional phase” that is emblematic of my entire life. It’s not quite a bedroom and not quite an office. While it may be on the verge of becoming a permanent “junk room”, I have hopes that one day it will be the room of dreams. I don’t know whose dreams, but I have high hopes.