My Messy-Not-Perfect American Family

This past weekend I celebrated my birthday with my family. As usual, when the fact that another year has gone by hits me, I start to reflect on my life and the world. I know… drama, drama, drama, but birthdays can really freak me out. I stew about how complicated real life is and I came to a couple of realizations.

I feel like I am part of a true American family, not the kind that we dream about in fairy tales where there are two perfect parents who never disagree, with two beautiful children (boy and girl of course) who have no learning disabilities or trouble in school. My husband and I were both married before….I like to call my first a “starter marriage.” Because my first husband and I had no kids, we divided up what was left of the wedding gifts and parted company. My husband Michael, on the other hand, has two amazing sons from his first union and one ex-wife who will always be a part of the major events of our lives. Add to that our daughter, who at five is nine years younger than her nearest sibling, and you have a messy situation, because blended families are not perfect, they are messy. It is not easy organizing vacations, weekends, and even family photos prove to be a huge problem…. My excuse for not sending out a Christmas cards the last two years is I can’t get all the kids together in one place looking good and I refuse to send a card out with out my stepsons.

I had a lot of training for this as I come from a messy family and I proclaim this proudly. My Mom’s parents split up when she was four and my Dad likes to say he married one woman and got three mother-in-laws. If that sounds like “fuzzy” math, here is how it works. I had two sets of Grandparents on my Mom’s side and they all got along really well. When my maternal grandmother passed away, my step-grandfather remarried and we pulled his new wife in as another Grandma… hence the 3 mother-in-laws. We called them all Grandma and Grandpa and I love that there was no difference.

My mother has been a fantastic source for me in how to treat “the boys” as we call my stepsons. She always pressed me to be a friend to them and to leave the parenting to my husband, to remember that the important thing was for them to spend time with their Dad, and that my planning the perfect family get together was less vital than them spending quality time with Michael. This has not always been easy because, heaven knows, I love to plan, but I continue to try to remember that no matter how much I love seeing them, “the boys” still need alone time with their father. Having our daughter helped me make some huge realizations about my husband’s feelings for his kids. Before you have a child, it’s so hard to imagine how much it can expand your capacity to love and your ability to truly put someone else’s life and needs completely ahead of your own. After Charlotte was born, I realized that some off-handed remark of mine about things the boys had done could have cut my husband to the quick. I have learned to be, I hope, a more forgiving stepmom.

There is a scene in “You’ve Got Mail,” one of my favorite Nora Ephron chick flicks, where Tom Hanks introduces two young children, one as his Aunt and one as his brother, both the progeny of later relationships of his grandfather and father respectively. I love this because it illustrates that families come in all shapes and forms: one Mom, two dads, parents that love each other but can’t stay together, half-siblings, step-parents, and the list goes on. On my birthday, as I try to be a little wiser, I choose to embrace the idea of the messy-not-perfect American family.