Holidays?

I am absolutely trashed with tiredness.

It’s been a busy few days; the Boys’ arrival, visitors, including a child who gets up four-plus times for the toilet each night, a midnight replay of some Grand Final or other that the Lovely Man simply had to watch.

And for the past two mornings, since the Boys arrived, we’ve been woken up multiple times by small bedroom visitors well before seven o’clock each morning.

……

We’re bored.

……

Boy B is hitting me!

……

We want to play PS3.

Despite refusal of permission from the Lovely Man, this was followed shortly by a blast of PS3 muzak at around sixty decibels.

Have I ever mentioned that our bedroom is separated from the TV and loungeroom by flimsy glass doors?

[Damn you, PS3. I never liked your dreadful soundtracks, the way you take over my living area or how wired you make the Boys, and now I like you less than ever. If I had my way I would donate you to a family in India so they could run a lucrative Ps3 café in their village.]

Added to my irritation was that every. single. visitation. was unaccompanied by the knock on the door stipulated by our “stupid” houserules.

So every. single. visitation. required me to wrestle the covers over my top half in a mad panic.

Finally, I gave up trying to snooze and lay in bed, listening to the sounds of  kids bickering, visitors chatting, the dog barking, doors slamming and PS3 warfare compete with the softer but equally unsettling background noises generated by inexperienced baristas mauling my beloved espresso machine.

I’m told they call this the holidays?

[Sorry, whinging will cease tomorrow. If I get at least five hours of unbroken sleep.]

Under the surface

On our overseas trip earlier this year, the Lovely Man and I met up with some friends, a couple who’ve been together about the same length of time as us, F & G.

Like us, they are a few years apart in age.

The guy, F, works in the same industry as the Lovely Man, so they have a lot in common there.

We all share some interests, but although we’ve been on holiday with them before, I’ve never felt that I knew them very well – they were really nice acquaintances rather than close friends.

When we met up with them this time, I went to give G a hug hello and immediately noticed a stonking great rock on her engagement finger. This thing was MASSIVE – when it glittered in the light I felt like I had been beamed, in a kind of “roo in the headlights” way. But it was very beautiful and tasteful. Exquisite, in fact.

I immediately thought:

Aha! Got an announcement to make then, guys?

And, sure enough, a few minutes of my valiantly trying to avert my gaze into the conversation, they kind of wriggled a bit bashfully and went pink and said:

Oh, and we’ve got some news, by the way. We got engaged!

No shit, Sherlock.

G was obviously a bit self-conscious about her new bling but very happy to relate the story of how F had smuggled the ring into his holiday backpack by completely wrapping it in gaffer tape and telling her it was a piece of work equipment he needed to claim a duty refund on while they were out of the country.

They are lovely people, and I really enjoyed spending time with them. But I couldn’t help thinking, looking at G’s husband-to-be and her happiness, that I wished things could have been so straightforward for me and the Lovely Man.

I never imagined, for instance, that well over two years into our relationship, he would still legally be married to somebody else.

As pleased as I was for my friends, it was all too easy to feel a bit wistful by comparison.

One day, though, the Great Blokey Men went off to do Death-Defying Man Stuff together and so G and I headed out to get lost on the mountain have some adventures ourselves.

We were talking about her relationship with F, as you do, and how happy she was, and how great he was, and how they were thinking of having kids soon, and where they were going to go for their honeymoon… when she totally dropped a bomb.

Haltingly, she told me a story that made me quadruple-take and completely cash in my assumptions about their so-called easy road.

While F may not have kids from a previous relationship, perhaps even more bogglingly, he “co-parents” three dogs with his ex-partner of ten years.

Whoa!

As it all came out – the crazy ex, the way she wanders into their house uninvited, the unscheduled late-night handovers, how she uses the dogs to stay connected to his life, F’s inability to set firm boundaries, the huge amounts of money she guilts out of F for “the dogs”, the way she phones constantly and manufactures dog drama to get attention, the threats to take the dogs away and never let F see them again that paralyse him with fear – all I could think was:

That sounds about right.

G went on to say how the situation had driven her to the edge of her mind, the constant encroachments and feeling second in her relationship to a trio of spoilt dogs and a vindictive, crazy-making ex eventually landing her in counselling.

She said that her friends and family couldn’t really understand, that they tended to minimise the difficulties of the situation and say totally unhelpful things like:

Can’t you just ignore it?

G even said that she felt terribly guilty at not being able to love these dogs that were so important to F.

Yep, sounds about right.

I guess co-parenting drama is co-parenting drama whether the young ‘uns involved have feathers, fur, fins or feet.

And as much as I love dogs, I can understand G feeling ripped off that despite F not even having kids she is still experiencing the joys of stepfamily life, navigating unbreakable ties formed before she was around and dealing with a trouble-making, boundary-free ex with a penchant for encroachment and manipulation.

At least the Lovely Man’s Boys are worth the dramas. I’d have a VERY hard time if we were going through all that for a trio of naughty, floor-weeing canines.

G was clearly relieved to share her situation with someone who all-too-easily understood the emotional toll it was taking, while I got a timely lesson in the grass not always being quite as green as it looks.

And, incidentally, for the first time I felt like we made an emotional connection that went beyond just doing stuff together.

We’ll be going to their wedding sometime next year. I’ll be looking out for something like this:

Star-crossed lovers?

One night during our recent Easter holiday with the Boys at my parents’ beach shack, the Lovely Man decided it would be fun to take them out for a traditional country-town Chinese meal, complete with lurid plum sauce and deep-fried everything.

As we drove back home through the darkness to the shack, honey chicken and sundry culinary delights gurgling in our tummies, Boy C piped up from the backseat:

Boy C: Do you know, Daddy, I think you and Mummy would make a really, really good couple. Like, with each other, you know?

Stunned silence from the front seat. The Lovely Man and I both, independently, decided against turning around and saying something like: “Actually, Mummy finally signed the divorce papers this week, so… nuh. Not going to happen.”

The Lovely Man squeezed my hand in the darkness as Boy C continued.

Boy C: Yeah, it would be perfect because you’re just like Harry Potter’s dad and mum, you’d be so well suited together.

More mute gulping from the front seat. Luckily Boy C didn’t seem to want an answer.

Boy C: They’d be a great couple, because, you see, Mummy’s so intelligent, just like Lily Potter and Dad’s so… ummm… so…

Boy B: Active! Dad’s really active, just like Harry’s dad! And they got together and had us, just like Harry’s parents had him.

(For the record, the Lovely Man is devastatingly smart. And the Boys’ Mum was apparently always a bit intimidated by that, despite being no slouch herself. The Boys, especially Boy A, often seem to feel compelled to insist to me how Very Intelligent she is, despite me never, ever saying a word about it or bringing up the issue of intelligence, of anyone, at all, ever.)

Boy A: What do you mean? Dad’s quite intelligent too, you know!

What came through very strongly from this conversation was that the Boys have a need to see the story of their parents’ marriage as special, almost mythic, within the family history. They need a love story, a sense of themselves as part of the family destiny. The divorce hasn’t altered that need; now the mythic love story they tell is just a little more star-crossed.

Harry and James Potter had their son, Harry, and were happily in love until the evil Voldemort killed them.

The Lovely Man and the Boys’ Mum had their three beautiful sons and were happily in love until the Evil Divorce Monster fell out of a clear blue sky and broke up their marriage.

(I could go further and add that Boy A, at least, identifies me directly with the Evil Divorce Monster.)

I can understand the Boys needing this sort of emotional family architecture to provide an account by which they can understand their existence. After all, if the way you see your parents’ marriage is that they were ill-suited and a bad match and their marriage was a mistake, then presumably in kid-magical-thinking terms, that makes you, their children, mistakes that should never have been made.

Then, of course, there are the obvious reconciliation fantasies at work in this little vignette. Those go without saying.

Fair enough.

One thing I never, ever, expected to experience in my stepfamily, though, was sitting in the front seat of the car while my stepchildren openly attempted to matchmake their parents based on the Harry Potter novels from the back seat.

How do your stepchildren think and talk about their parents’ marriage?

How do you and/or your partner respond when it comes up?

What’s the most unexpected thing your stepkids have ever come up with?

Making rules…

…but for pity’s sake don’t even think of calling them “family rules”! I can almost hear the reaction now, echoed back from eleventy million step households: “You’re not my family and you don’t make rules for me!”

[Sarcasm switches off]

Anyway, the Boys arrive tomorrow and I’ve been attempting to negotiate our first formalised set of house rules with the Lovely Man.

Rules and boundaries generally seem to be touchy topics and getting to this point has taken ages; the first time I raised the idea of house rules was nearly eighteen months ago! Even talking about it has been delicate, particularly the bit about introducing set bedtimes.

I gather that lots of separated parents, and especially dads, really struggle with firming up on boundaries for their kids. One blog I particularly remember described a dad saying to his wife, the stepmother of his two children, that he was “OK with having rules but not comfortable with there being consequences”.

And doesn’t THAT sounds like a hiding to nothing and nowhere for the unfortunate stepmother trying to get some kind of grip on the behaviour of the kids in her house?

The more superficial stepparenting books suggest that it’s a bad idea to “assume” an authority figure role with your stepkids, but I’m convinced those authors must have full-time nannies at their disposal. If not, there will be situations when the stepparent is forced to be the adult in charge and needs to direct the kids in some way. I try to minimise it, but basically, if the Lovely Man wants to work while we have the Boys, it’s inevitable that I have to step up from Wingman to Maverick status sometimes.

I described being an adult in charge in our hitherto (mostly) “rule-free” house to the Lovely Man as “a bit like trying to herd lobsters underwater”. That’s right, I think it’s harder than herding cats.

Not being one of the Boys’ parents, I don’t have natural authority with them, other than a little with Boy C perhaps. And yet there are many times when I need them to do what I ask, like when I’m doing the school run, when they’re hurting each other, or when I can’t in good conscience do one more speck of cleaning up without them contributing.

And those times are when I hit a brick wall, because without either (a) the natural authority that blood parents take so much for granted OR  (b) clear house rules fully backed by the Lovely Man, I often may as well sing to whales as expect the Boys to obey me.

So, rules are good. Ultimately, of course, they’re at least as necessary to our stepkids as they are to us. Our stepfamily psychologist reminds me that rules help stepkids feel that they actually live a normal life with their other parent, rather than just being occasional visitors. And that despite the whingeing, that sense of normality, of having a place and a role, is something children of divorce crave.

BUT…

Whether it’s about Dads wanting to avoid being the bad guy, feeling afraid of losing the “popularity contest” to a more permissive mother or just wanting their limited time with the kids to be all fun-fun-fun, it seems that setting and enforcing even simple rules is a fraught process in many stepfamilies.

So far the Lovely Man’s and my rules list is running to about four pages and is full of fluffy abstract concepts. Not exactly a collection of snappy ideas that I’d choose to post on the fridge, then.

It needs whittling big time. Like with a chainsaw.

So I’m wondering:

Do you have specific house rules in your stepfamily?

If so, what are they?

And how did they get put in place?

Easter ergs

The Boys are with their Mum for Easter this year, and with us in our state for the second week of the school holidays. We’ll head down for a few days in my parents’ caravan at the beach – I’m anticipating long morning walks on the beach, sand all over the floor all the time, warm afternoons relaxing with my books under a big sunhat, and cool evenings with bonfires on the beach.

The last time we took the boys away “proper” camping, they were so obsessed by rolling around in the sand, playing beach cricket, fishing and swimming that the Lovely Man and I actually got some significant downtime in. I’m hoping this trip will be similar, since our regular life is very much of the Go! Go! Go! variety.

There is one odd thing about this upcoming Easter, though.

In our city, it’s going to be completely egg-free.

I had a conversation with the Lovely Man on our walk last night:

Me: So, shall we organise an egg hunt for the Boys this year? I know it won’t technically be Easter, but….

Lovely Man, interrupting: No, I don’t think so.

Me: Oh. But they enjoyed it last year, didn’t they?

Lovely Man: They did, but I want to move away from celebrating religious festivals I don’t believe in with the Boys.

Me: Well, shall we get them some new PJs instead then? They all badly need them, and it was such a nice holiday tradition growing up in my family that we always got our winter pyjamas in the Easter holidays.

Lovely Man: No, they do need some but I really don’t want to link that with Easter either.

As a secular humanist, I’ve never had a problem with celebrating religious festivals. My dad is an atheist, my mum a long-lapsed Catholic with a deep suspicion of institutionalised religion, but Easter and Christmas were always joyful times for my sister and brother and me.

As children we understood the Christian message of the celebrations, but in the life of our family they had other meanings. Christmas was about celebration and sharing, a chance to appreciate each other. Easter meant enjoying our family without the commercialism of Christmas, eating toasted hot cross buns for breakfast, and spending a few quiet days away at the beach, a time when (here in the Southern Hemisphere, anyway) we would get ready for the new season by recharging with a final dose of sunshine or playing cards together on rainy days.

I’m sure devout readers will find the idea of “Christ-less” religious celebrations empty, but for us they were rich with a different kind of meaning and we felt the magic of anticipation for weeks ahead of the actual date.

So I feel a bit sad for the Boys that the Lovely Man’s stricter views about celebrating religious festivals mean they won’t forge the cosy link between Eastertime and the year’s new flannelette pyjamas and warm slippers. Or stage a second egg hunt at our house. Or share with us whatever it is that Easter means to them.

Happy Easter, whatever that means for you.

Isn’t it funny….

…. that when I’m actually full time, hands-on step-parenting for any extended length of time I have so much less time and energy for blogging about stepfamily life?

Probably all you full time stepmums and mums with kids of your own are shaking your heads pityingly at this moment, maybe even with a phrase on your lips that goes something like:

No shit, Sherlock!

But for formerly single, childless me, the durrr-obvious impact of Christmas and renovations on top of wrangling three boys on their first holiday visit to our city since I started blogging came as a bit of a surprise.

Gone!

Were my fantasies of blogging every day during my holidays.

Whoosh!!!

Went the idea of spending any significant one-on-one time with the Lovely Man.

Kahboom!!!!!!

Exploded, repeatedly, the soundtrack of the PS3 now apparently permanently ensconced in my loungeroom.

Peace be with me at Christmas?

Not likely!

It’s great to be back. Happy New Year, everyone.