Stepping into motherhood

I often wonder how my stepsons will remember me when they are old and grey and reminiscing about their youth. I dream that it will be of a fine upstanding woman who offered them a different perspective on life. In reality I reckon they'll remember a weird old duck who only ever made chicken for dinner.

It's true I do cook a bit of chicken. Roast chicken. Chicken fillets. Drumsticks in soy sauce. And did I say roast chicken? What the stepsons won't remember, what they will have conveniently locked away in the darkest recesses of their mind is that chicken was the only thing the little buggers would eat. Oh, and potatoes.

Living in a stepfamily has taught me more about life than three trips to Europe and a cruise to Fiji. Living in a stepfamily is terrifying, uplifting, unnerving, funny and bewildering. I live in happy bewilderment for most of the time.

It all started three years ago when the boys' dad and I walked down the aisle ­ as best man and bridesmaid for mutual friends who really were getting married. Five months later the ‘four of us’ moved in together.

Writing this I now realise that Ian and I must have hit the fast forward button on life's virtual video recorder. We ‘got married’ before we met, we had children before we'd held hands, we bought a house before we started looking for one.

The thing about becoming a stepfamily is that everything happens fast. When you have a child of your own you work up to things slowly and you get plenty of time to prepare for blowing runny noses or hosting sleepovers.

When you have stepchildren, suddenly they're there, bang, already formed with mushroom haircuts and a list of likes and dislikes. Like Nintendo games, olives with no stuffing, frisbees, chocolate Paddle Pops. (They're the likes.) Like broccoli, long soccer socks, making beds, washing up with Trix, honey Paddle Pops. (They're the dislikes.)

The quickest thing I learnt was to take things slowly. The boys and their dad had already established a happy routine before I came along. Who was I to race around and change their white bread to wholemeal or their Coke to homebrand mineral water? 

When the boys and their dad were glued to The Simpsons while a special on Sammy Davis was showing on the other channel, did I kick up a fuss? Yes, but only in the bathroom with the door shut tight.

The Commonwealth Bank has been applauded as the most popular bank because it never raises customers¹ expectations. I reckon this is a beautiful philosophy for step-parenting. Don't raise the expectations and then no one will be disappointed.  Don’t fret, just lay back till you're cross-eyed and almost hallucinating.

So the marbles are chipping paint off the skirting boards and the indoor footy game threatens to rearrange the bonsai. In the grand scheme of things, when there are wars in Africa and Pat Rafter loses Wimbledon, it doesn't really matter.

What does matter and is carried out with the precision of a military strike, is timing. That is when the boys stay with us, when they're with their mum, when they go to tennis lessons, when Marcus ‘goes to trumpet’.

In our stepfamily the boys are with us every second weekend beginning Friday, every Tuesday and one boy every Thursday. To the outside world this might seem as complicated as finding the square root of a dozen boiled eggs. But to the boys it comes as naturally as fighting for the front seat of the car.

When we first all got together the ‘all’ included the boys’ mum and her partner. It was important that they meet the weird old duck who always cooked chicken for dinner.

After the first few meetings I started to relax, and one and a half years later I was happily attending celebrations for the boys in their mother’s home. On one occasion, I actually found myself sitting at the birthday table, breast milk spurting in jubilant arcs as I fed our new addition, Josh.

It sounds like a cliche but having a baby has brought our stepfamily even closer - in spite of some violent displays of affection. Josh, now two years old, is thrilled when the boys arrive home from school, clutches their thighs and clings like a limpet as they hobble down the passage to their room.

For their part, the boys are happily introducing their new brother to the brave new world of Game Boys, Nintendos and popcorn that swells miraculously in a bag in the microwave.

On a good day the three of them sit around the computer game in the bedroom, eyes bulging, faces fraught, fingers in a frenzy. On a bad day, the bedroom door slams shut and Josh is out in the hall, banished for the term of his natural life.

Communication is vital in all families but finding subjects that interest the boys and don¹t bamboozle me has been challenging. The Lord of the Rings I can cope with because somewhere in my past I read the book and vaguely remember a bloke named Frodo.

It’s the Nintendo that paralyses. I’ve tried, I really have. I’ve sat with the boys and turned myself inside out to understand what is happening on that gloomy grey screen. ‘How come they’re always shooting each other in toilet blocks?’ is the best I can offer.

The flip side of all this is when the boys ask for some help with their homework. This usually happens when their dad’s at work. ‘What’s three quarters of the world’s circumference?’, they ask. ‘Which planet lies between Jupiter and Uranus?’ My response is invariably: ‘How about we conjugate the French verb aller? Je vais, Tu vas, Il va...’

Often in stepfamilies signs of affection come slowly but they do come and then the feeling is thrilling. We visited the museum a few months ago. The highlight of the afternoon was the bubble machine in the courtyard and a Big M at the cafe.

Andrew and I went off to find the toilets and when I came out of the Ladies there he was waiting for me. He could have gone off to inspect the man-eating shark or the deadly poisonous tarantula. But there he was, just waiting for the weird old duck.

By Jo-Ann Stubbings

This article was first published in Australian Family Magazine, May 2002.