(wince)

Aunt Pillowhead learned something new this weekend. Read on, and benefit from her hard-won wisdom:

When you see a fairly new business acquaintance at business event and turn to give him a casual hug "hello," step on his foot, lose your balance, fall into him and turn that casual hug into an awkwardly long, clinging, desperate struggle to not continue falling forward so you don't knock him over and land on top of him, you need to be Jennifer Aniston acting in a slapstick comedy for it to be cute and funny.

If you're not acting, and it's not a slapstick comedy, and you're not Jennifer Aniston, but merely an off-kilter middle-aged woman who is exhausted because you've been up since 2:30 and taken a terrifying plane ride to this event, then it's not cute and funny at all. It's just really, really embarrassing and difficult to explain. Worst of all, the memory of it, which you will be unable to block despite repeated attempts, will make you feel as graceful and elegant as a manatee.

So, from now on, before you hug somebody, remember these three important rules:

1. Make sure you are well-rested and in top form.
2. Keep your balance.
3. Feet on the floor at all times.

Your friend,
Aunt Pillowhead

Simple Gifts

It's been months. Months and months and months, I know.

I stopped writing here a long time ago, because, for a long time, things have just been even, and steady, and good, and I didn't feel the need to tell stories that had amusing slants to otherwise difficult episodes. Life became normal, I guess, in a good and happy way, and I just kind of stopped needing to be the struggling heroine in a saga about love and selflessness, unrequited.

Then, today someone asked me for the link to this blog, because she has a friend who is a newlywed and a newlystepmom of a 13 year-old girl, and she thought it would help. Everything challenging about stepparenting came rushing back to me. "Bless her heart," I thought.

It's a funny phrase, "Bless her heart." A kind of catch-all they use in the south to describe someone who's doomed, and who has no idea she is. I don't know if my friend's friend is doomed, but face it, even in the best case scenario, that is going to be hard. Territorial divisions, symbolic boycotting of cooperation, thanklessness, dramatic button-pushing--these are things every teenager does, and teenage girls tend to do it so all so well. It's hard enough when they're your own. But when they're your stepchildren, and they come into your lives in that stage--yikes. That makes it all really hard.

But it can also be really wonderful, eventually.

And I realized that here I am now, with Jeep Boy an 18 year-old, college-bound adult (who, by the way, had another party in our house when we were on vacation last week, we just found out, and I am going to kill him for that later, remind me if I forget) and Hammerhead 15, deep-voiced and the fuzzy shadow of a mustache on his sassy upper lip. If this is a marathon, I'm on about mile 23. Wow. I'm almost done.

Wow.

Last weekend, I was looking at pictures of these boys when we first met--they were 4 and 7--and I was overwhelmed with memories of these last eleven years: of removing splinters from their grubby paws and re-homing spiders found in their bedrooms (both areas of my particular expertise), of running to comfort them when they woke crying at 1:00 in the morning with night terrors (Perfect Man sleeps like a log), of cooking breakfasts and driving to friends' houses to pick up/drop off, of birthday cakes made and laundry washed, of soccer practice and karate practice and drum practice and orchestra concerts (ouch, my ears), of resolving battles, meting out consequences, and soothing hurt feelings. The times we butted heads, the times they turned to me, and all the times in between.

And I was aware of something very profound and very simple: that through the conscious sharing of these last eleven years, the fabrics of our lives have been woven together, and we are part of the same narrative. And I am aware that I love them, and that they love me.

For a long time, I really wasn't sure that they loved me. But after yesterday, I am.

I have a terrible cold this week, one that has me flat on my back. The boys came home from school yesterday and shouted around to see where I was. When Hammerhead found me up in my room, looking like something the cat dragged in, he stood at the foot of my bed. I thought he was going to ask me if he could have a snack, or if I could take him somewhere. But he asked me if I wanted a cup of tea. I said, "Yes, please." And then my insolent, stubborn, sarcastic, rigid, hard-headed 15 year-old stepson went downstairs and made me one, brought back up, and put it gently down on my bedside table.

Bingo!

I'm back. Because, wow--look at that! This had to be posted!
During a Scrabble game last week, above my bingo (frowned), Hammerhead executed 'toasted,' a quite brilliant play, one so tidy and lovely and absolutely clever it has to be commemorated here. 98 points. Bully for him!!!

A little history:
One of the things that Hammerhead and I share is a love of this game, which I began teaching him to play when he was just a wee lad, with a wee little vocabulary.

He immediately understood some of the particularly satisfying quirks of the game: the learning and strategic use of obscure two letter words (xi, xu, ka, qi) that one would never use in a sentence, unless one happened to be involved in a monetary exchange of some kind in Vietnam. He also took (with unnerving immediacy) to the groove of the open board, the thrill of the triple letter/triple word, and the absolute nirvana of the double double word/ triple triple word connection.

And bingos, well, bingos are always nice, too. And he totally got that.

So back in these early days, when Hammerhead was only 6 or so, and we were in the early throes of the Scrabble tutorial, to be fair, I let him ask me three questions per turn (ie: "is 'toit' a word?"*). And since he was a quick learner and naturally clever in this way, armed with this assistant, it didn't take him long to be a competitive opponent. When he finally beat me one day, I told him that we needed to even the playing field, and now it was only one question per turn, which eventually became one question per game. Which eventually became no help whatsoever.

Sidebar: I have a love of vintage clothes, and a corresponding love of vintage buttons. In a big box, I keep my vintage buttons in separate compartments, according to their composition. Hammerhead used to love to look through the button box, and was especially enamored with a red plastic, flower-shaped button with a rhinestone in the center, which he believed to be an actual diamond. I told him it wasn't, but he was convinced it was, and that it was quite valuable. He asked me if he could have it. I told him that the day he beat me in Scrabble, with no help and no cheats, the button would be his. I made a necklace of it with a long piece of black thread and hung it from a wall hook in the kitchen that was on the wall, just above Snapper's food bowl.

Snapper, rest his soul, was my old, beloved-but-hateful, temperamental mutt who was particularly defensive when it came to food. About 50 pounds, with the colorings of a boxer, but the physique of a small husky, Snapper would go nuts if he thought you were messing with his kibble. And in his old age, when his vision dimmed, he was even more aggressive this way, presumably because he couldn't see what was going on and that made him especially nervous.

So on the kitchen hook was the Beautiful Button, and every day Hammerhead would gaze at it and dream of the day he'd win it fair and square, whereupon he would immediately take it to a diamond dealer, cash it in for a cool million, and buy himself a new Lamborghini. But one day, when I was placing my car keys on the same kitchen hook that held the button, I knocked the button off the hook, and it fell into Snapper's bowl.

Hearing the sound of his bowl being messed with, Snapper came screeching around the corner, and, with Hammerhead and I watching with disbelief and before we could say, "Don't do it!", scooped up whatever it was that had fallen in there with his snappy mouthful of sharp yellow teeth.

He came up from the bowl shaking his head in confusion, with the button swinging from his mouth, sparkling in the sunlight, the thread caught on one of his bottom teeth. Hammerhead and I sort of laughed and sort of gasped, but when I reached gently to dislodge the button, Snapper hopped back, growled, and ate that button so fast we couldn't believe it. Hammerhead was crushed. I offered to do poop patrol for the next few days, but Hammerhead was disgusted by the thought, and dejectedly gave up the dream of winning the beautiful button and how his life would be forever changed by the luxury Italian automobile it would buy for him. It was a sad but memorable day.

Anyway, fast forward. We're playing now, regularly, and Hammerhead has indeed beaten me once without help.

But that wasn't this game. That was last year. However, this game was far more significant, far important. He beat me last year in a game when I had terrible luck, nothing but what I call "Old MacDonald" hands (EEIEEIO), he had no real spectacular plays, and only beat me by five points.

But this game! Look at the thought and strategy he had to employ to place 'toasted' above 'frowned.' Finding the spot, realizing he had an opportunity there, realizing that with this particular placement, all the 'down' words worked--it's just awesome.

I beat him by over a hundred points, but I told him--and meant it--that he really won this one.
I was so proud of him!!


*It is. "to amble, meander"

Owed To A Blog

I just read Jill's latest entry on the DXH. And it’s funny, I’ve also stopped writing in my own blog, for what sounds like the same reason: things are just a little different now.

We still have ups and downs, I still get happy and mad, and I still do and say things I wish I could take back. I’ve got plenty of anecdotes I could share (like catching Jeep Boy puffing the cheeba in his room one night, or getting a call from the police at 1:00 am when Hammerhead and a friend he was "spending the night with" were caught breaking curfew. To name just two.).

But writing about it daily, or even weekly, at this point, feels less like sorting through my reactions to challenging new relationships and more like exploiting the dynamics of old familiar ones, for entertainment's sake.


Maybe this blog has served its purpose. Writing about the things I had difficulty recognizing, accepting, and managing when it came to being a stepmother has forced me to own all of it, to examine myself and my motivations even when I didn't want to, and ultimately, helped me see some ways I can do all of this just a little bit better.

Then again, maybe it's just summer break, and maybe things will pick right back up again in the fall, full force and then some.

We'll see...

The Beat Goes On

Hammerhead is now taking drum lessons.


Which means he now practices those lessons every day, here at home, on his drum set, which Perfect Man bought him.



Because, if a somewhat stubborn, slightly imperious teenage stepson and his somewhat controlling, slightly indignant stepmother who is a writer and works from home are having a little trouble, there's nothing like getting him a drum set to get the dialogue going.

It is going to be an interesting four more years, boy howdy.

Degrading

That's what Hammerhead got on his Civil Rights report.

So, weep for the future of the country. Or at least for the future of public schools.

Fun & Games

It was a good week with Hammerhead and Jeep Boy, which was fantastic for me to experience since two weeks ago, there was a Hammerhead incident that left me thinking about long, extended vacations (or, more accurately, sabbaticals) for stepmothers, to places like Paris, for periods of time such as four years, and/or when the stepson in question turns 18. I might tell you all about that some day. But not today.

Anyway, this week, it was a good week. The boys both wanted to be around us, and we all went to a friend's Sunday brunch birthday party together, along with our dear friend Cut The Bullshit, whom the boys adore and who adds an element of irreverent fun wherever she goes. We were surprised the boys wanted to come to the brunch, because we knew it would be a sedate affair, which turned out to be a vast underestimation of the actual level of energy and social stimulation we experienced. On the way home, we laughed and teased and celebrated with the conviviality of survivors of a close call. And caught up in this, the boys suggested we play a family game of Monopoly after dinner.

However, between this warm fuzziness and the Monopoly game, an "accident" occurred. I was going out to the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner, and Hammerhead was coming along for the ride. In the driveway, while he was waiting for me to find my purse/keys, etc, he looked up and noticed that Jeep Boy's bedroom window was open. According to the official report, what happened next was that he called out "Jeep Boy!" and when Jeep Boy appeared at the window, Hammerhead threw a few large pieces of mulch up and hit him in the face with it. Jeep Boy laughed and said, "Hey! Stay right there!" and for some reason, Hammerhead obeyed. Which is why, when Jeep Boy returned to the window with a Titleist golf ball and threw it at Hammerhead's head, it so quickly and easily found its target, with such a clear, loud, and satisfying accompanying popping sound.

So anyway, when I came out to the driveway what I saw was Hammerhead leaning against the car weeping silently, and Jeep Boy running out of the house behind me with a zip lock bag full of ice, saying, "I didn't really mean to hurt him." After Hammerhead accepted the zip lock bag and they both brought me up-to-date, and after I felt the impressive goose egg forming on my younger stepson's noggin and remarked that it was quite a doozy, we all went our respective ways, with alarmingly little friction. It was a though we all--each of us--knew our roles and responsibilities: Hammerhead had started it, so he knew he wasn't an innocent victim. Jeep Boy had overreacted and actually hurt his brother, so he knew he'd gone too far and should at least prepare an ice pack as a show of compassion. And I knew I was the stepmother, not the mother, so I just felt the bump and verified that it was big and probably did hurt. No lectures, no scolding, no judgment, no blame. Good.

So about Monopoly: Perfect Man fell asleep on the couch after dinner, so it was the three of us for the game. Which was hysterical. Jeep Boy has this new “sassy teenager” patois that’s really cute—funny voices, sarcastic asides. Which he used to full effect to chide Hammerhead, the self-appointed Monopoly Tsar, mercilessly. Hammerhead takes this particular game very seriously, and has his own ideas of certain variations of rules that should be followed (most of which border on the ludicrous, as do his Monopoly manners in general). Basically, he's an insufferable control freak. When we’d roll the dice he'd move our tokens for us, when we landed on Chance or Community Chest he’d pick up the card for us and read it to us. He couldn’t help himself, it was too funny. And those ridiculous rules: if you roll snake eyes, you have to pay a fine? if you roll doubles more than three times, you have to pay a fine? Whatever! Jeep Boy and I were laughing our heads off, and refused to honor any of them, and Hammerhead became surly and indignant.

At one point, Hammerhead was in dire financial straits, and asked Jeep Boy to trade certain properties for other certain properties. Jeep Boy laughed and said "No way!"

"Oh, come on, Tiger Woods," I said. "Make the trade. You owe him one."

He laughed and said, "Okay," and then went on for a few minutes about how neatly and perfectly the golf ball had hit, and the surprising resonance of the popping sound it made, and even Hammerhead laughed.

A few minutes later, after Hammerhead had tried out another one of his ridiculous secret rules and we both laughed him down, Jeep Boy rolled a seven, and I said, “Jeep Boy, when you roll a seven, you have to give Hammerhead all your money.” And we all had a good long laugh.

It was really a fun weekend for me; it seems we all have found a new comfortable place to enjoy each other, and it’s working. I’m really happy about that, and trying to just appreciate it while it lasts.

(I creamed them both, by the way. But not until 11:00--yikes.)