I spent about two hours on my first Mother’s Day curled up on the floor of our walk-in closet, clutching the baby monitor as I waited for my eight-month-old son to wake up because I couldn’t stand the thought that someone else might hear him crying first. And for most of those two hours, I sobbed. Not just crying, but full-body, heaving sobs. Presumably, what set this off was the fact that my brother came over to help my husband cook dinner before I had cleaned the kitchen. It was the first family celebration I had hosted in our new home, and I was determined for it to be perfect. An untidy kitchen is not perfection. It took several weeks of getting over the incident and a great deal of perspective to realize that my meltdown that day had nothing to do with kitchens or family celebrations. It had everything to do with my stepson.
The child who is now my stepson came into my life when he was just two years old. When he first told me he loved me three months later, I was already over the moon about him. When his father and I married, he was an integral part of the ceremony. After all, I was not just becoming a wife. My husband and his ex-girlfriend share equal custody of their son, so I was automatically a part-time mother, as well.
I was pregnant on the first Mother’s Day that followed, so I spent the day in blissful anticipation of the joy that was coming a few short months later. My stepson went to his mother that day, and as far as I knew, everything was as it should be.
The following year we dutifully packed my stepson's bags and sent him back to his mother the night before Mother’s Day. The next day I would be celebrated because I was finally a “real” mom with a “real” son. In reality, I curled up in the dark, disconsolate, waiting for my baby to wake up. I didn’t realize how hollow I felt that day, and would feel every Mother’s Day since, until several weeks later.
I was being recognized as a mother—for kissing scraped knees, for cleaning vomit off the bathroom floor, for sitting through tedious school programs just to barely catch a glimpse of my child singing in the back row. But for two years I had done those things for my stepson, without regret or resentment. Without recognition. I did them feeling no differently toward him than I do toward my younger children now. And yet, every year, he spends the day with his mom, and my family, my nest, is one child short.
I don’t think that things should be any other way. He should be with the woman who gave birth to him. But occasionally, I want to be recognized for being the woman who didn’t give birth to him and whose heart doesn’t feel any differently as a result. I want school secretaries and doctor’s offices and soccer coaches to realize that stepparents are more than just ancillary figures in the lives of these shared children. I want other women to stop assuming that all stepmothers are "the other woman" and realize that we are women who helped make a family where there wasn't one before. I want stepparents to have a moment of their own to be recognized for the gift of what they do, too.
Every year, my husband and I willingly make sure that our oldest is with his mother—the “real” one. I no longer sob on the floor of the closet. But my heart does ache a little bit for the child with whom I don’t get to celebrate. The child who will get an extra big hug when he comes home again.
Tags: mother\\\'s day stepmothers stepparenting
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