Last week my husband's youngest son turned 12. This means I have known him for seven years. The eldest is nearly 14, and their double digit advancement is relentless. It lacks imagination but recently even I've been wailing with sadness about how fast they grow up. I cheerfully admit total hypocrisy here, because I've spent the last seven years moaning about what a massive pain young kids are.
Two main things strike me on the far side of this recent birthday milestone. One, several friends have since also collected step kids, ignoring a lot of advice they didn't ask for, but seemingly doing a much better job than me. I'm guessing there'll be more of these to come. And two, I haven't come to any conclusions whatsoever about the value or worth of having my own children, and I don't know whether this is clouded by spending time with someone else's. Children are still as big a mystery to me today as they ever were. Why and how people merrily have them with minimal thought and maximum confidence is a total puzzle. The only thoughts I have are vague, such as;
1. We share clothes a lot, the two boys and I. I'm wearing a lovely navy gilet now which belongs to one of them. And, since they've forgotten they own it, I'll never be asked for it back. Sometimes at the dinner table I will look up and see them both in my hand me downs. Worryingly, my husband put a pair of boys Bonds undies in my clothes pile just this morning. This suggests problems in our marriage on many, many levels....though in my defence I haven't worn them. Yet.
2. I still dislike saying 'step kids' or 'stepson' or being on the receiving end description of 'step mother'. It just isn't comfortable. It's a bit like wearing trainers as street fashion, it's for other people.
3. It still surprises me how unaware 'real' parents are about how 'same same' step-parenting is. I still get asked by friends, 'so, how often do you have them?' as if it might be once a semester or three times a year. Same answer for seven years. Every second weekend, all year, and four weeks a year holiday. They also still, in conversation about their own kids, roll their eyes and say 'just wait!' as if I may not be aware of the phenomena of kids at bath time, or bed time, or travelling, or endless conversations about whether you'd rather be a warrior squirrel or a battlefield badger etc etc. I have done all of those things. I have ticked off that list too.
4. I feel good about the things I've taught them: laundry, cooking, and that God may just be a figment of mass imagination. They, in turn, have taught me a lot of things about igneous rocks, the angles of reflection and refraction, and the difference between Doric and Corinthian columns using the Bank of England as a case study. Together we have faced Wellington's Non Verbal Reasoning paper, and won. I bloody hate Non-Verbal Reasoning.
5. The thing I would like to teach them now is that it's all blind luck. Everything. Luck of genes, luck of country, luck of time, luck of the draw. They could so easily be riding a refugee boat out of North Africa, or being shelled in Afghanistan, or starving in some shit hole in Glasgow. I am sad that in going to boarding school they will be surrounded only by other white kids soaked in litres of similar luck. I hope they don't become people who moan about immigration levels, or paying tax.
6. I read somewhere once that being a step parent was like swimming up a waterfall. I don't know what they meant by that, I guess something about always trying but never getting there. It hasn't been that bad.
7. I had a funny conversation the other night with a man who just couldn't understand why his second wife didn't want to get particularly involved with his kids from his first marriage. 'She likes them, but she doesn't really want to have much to do with them...' he said, genuinely puzzled. He said, 'but isn't being a step-parent brilliant? All fun and no responsibility?' It made me laugh then, and on many occasions since. One day, people might stop assuming all women to be welcoming caves of maternal interest.
8. If I had one piece of advice to anyone new to it all, and even to myself today, it would be to do things with your partner's kids on your own. I don't even mean fun hobbies, though that's great if you can. I mean just anything, like picking them up from school, doing the groceries, washing the car, going for a run, anything. When you're on your own with someone you have to make more of an effort. When you are otherwise a bit of a third wheel, and not involved in the big decisions, it's hard to see why you should bother.
9. No one wants to hear that you don't love your step kids. This is strange to me, as scientific studies have proven that 56 per cent of all people in Western families daydream about murdering at least one blood family member*. If you do meet someone who says they understand, they will still ask you 'but you'd really miss them if they weren't around, right?' And the look they give you makes you want to hug them, and tell them everything is OK.
10. I don't understand why parents want to talk to their kids all the time. At work, a lot of fathers are in the early teen years at the moment and there's a lot of frustration about how their kids are silent in the long drives from school and back. I say, isn't silence one of humanity's greatest virtues? Coming years of teen silence holds no fear for me. It sure beats the 'badger army vs squirrel army' conversation.
11. I hate being beaten at anything by the kids. It is much, much worse than being beaten by anyone else. They bring out the worst of the bad loser in me.
*this is a totally made up statistic, I bet the truth is much higher.
By Katherine Burgdorf.
