Blissfully Blended Bullshit

by Rebecca Eckler

  I, too, would end up cleaning up shit in the house. I would end up feeding the dog when Boyfriend is on a business trip. Toby would continue to eat our underwear, the crotches of our jeans, and the toilet paper, and would scratch the paint off the door when he wanted to come inside or be let out.

  Still, shitty as that nutty dog is, shitting and peeing on my carpets, shitting and peeing in the baby’s room, shitting on our bliss, the humans in the house are loving every second of this precious new addition that is Baby Holt.

  · FOUR ·

  It actually took a surprisingly decent amount of time for the first bump to plant itself right in the middle of our love highway. The early days of our new blended life were oh-so blissful. Look at us, all blended and perfect! Baby Holt has worked his adorable way into our lives. Boyfriend and I have settled into this co-parenting thing really well. The girls love their brother. We are all getting along so well. Until we aren’t. And it isn’t adjusting to the baby that does it. You’d think that would be a huge deal, but nope. Baby Holt joining our family was a breeze.

  It starts, as many fights do, over something seemingly really inane. And we were all on such a blissful role, damn it! Like I’ve said, the early days of blending are both surprisingly and fortunately not bad at all. It feels like we are doing a fun experiment to see what happens when you throw a bunch of random people in a house together. It’s like our own reality television show: Real World: Blended Family. Boyfriend and my daughter get along. Boyfriend’s kids seem happy. They seem to feel comfortable around me, and I feel comfortable around them. Blending households is still a novelty for all of us. We have a superb cast, but as in any good thriller, we didn’t see this plot twist coming. I certainly didn’t.

  We all are usually in good moods around each other, as we mostly go about our business and slowly adjust to our new reality. We all eat together when the kids are with us. We all enjoy our movie nights. I guess it makes sense, then, that our first battle isn’t over some massive misstep or overstep. Just when we thought we were getting used to this whole blended family thing and getting pretty damn good at it — boom! — a battle has emerged. It’s a ridiculous fight. Like, seriously cuckoo. Like a bear-combing-his-hair or a cat-wearing-a-hat ridiculous.

  I start calling it the Hi/Bye Fight, because that’s exactly what it is. The debate is over who should say “Hi” first when Boyfriend’s children are staying with us, when they walk in the door, and who should get up to say “Bye” when they leave. Here I thought everything was going along swimmingly, when Boyfriend’s kids tattled on me for something I didn’t even know I was doing — or, rather, not doing.

  “They told me you didn’t say hi to them when they walked in this afternoon,” Boyfriend says to me after the girls have headed to their bedroom to sleep. One of the many joys of being in a blended family is that there is, by virtue of our dynamic, a lot of tattling. When Boyfriend tells me what his girls said to him, I feel like I have been called down to the principal’s office or that Boyfriend has just told me his children have filed a complaint against me with Human Resources. I’m such a monster!

  I’m not going to lie. I’m not rushing to apologize for this perceived slight. Were they even serious? Is he serious? I do have flaws, of course, but I’m the first to concede (and apologize!) when I am wrong or have upset someone. But now I’m pissed off. He’s fucking with me, right? Boyfriend surely is about to follow up with a comment like, “Can you believe that?” We’re not actually going to have a discussion about the fact his girls complained that I didn’t say hi to them first, are we?

  But he is completely serious. His children were completely serious. What the actual fuck? First, I didn’t actively ignore his kids, because I’m not an asshole. Second, why is this popping up only now? They’ve walked through my doors hundreds of times. It’s actually been two years since moving day, and things, quite frankly, have been lovely. There has been nothing to indicate a disruption in the force. I guess the honeymoon phase is over.

  One of two things must have actually happened: either I was so engrossed in what I was working on that I didn’t even hear them come in, or I said hi and they just didn’t hear me. How either option leads to me being “in trouble” is beyond me.

  It doesn’t really matter how silly I think this is. Boyfriend’s children feel insulted and now I’m in trouble and I have to make it right because I’m the adult and I can’t believe this has turned into a thing. From their perspective, they truly believe I didn’t say hi, an apparently egregious offence in a blended family, and so they told on me. Even if it is true (which it is not!), why is this such a big deal? Is our first big riff really going to be over greetings and salutations? This is bullshit.

  Why the fuck didn’t anyone warn me? If I knew this would eventually turn out to be a years-long standoff, you bet your ass I would have rolled out a red carpet for them every time they arrived, just so I wouldn’t have to deal with this bullshit of who should say hi first.

  “That was my biggest pet peeve,” one friend tells me when I ask her if this fight happened in her blended household, during a bitch-fest. “I would walk in the kitchen after a long day at work, see empty pizza boxes everywhere, and my husband’s children wouldn’t look up from whatever they were watching on television to say a simple ‘hello’ to me. I felt so disrespected.” Like me, she too thinks the children should say hi first when walking in the door. Her (now) ex-husband, she says, refused to get involved in their hi/bye standoff. Even when my friend would say “H-e-l-l-o!” to them, somewhat sarcastically, so they knew she was home, they still barely looked up. She would barely get a caveman-like grunt as an acknowledgment that she was home.

  Blended families necessitate tattling. Kids tell their bio parents if they’re pissed about something so that they have an advocate in whatever battle they want to fight. Battles in our household are a mixture of monkey-in-the-middle meets broken telephone. It’s about as mature a scenario as it sounds.

  “I don’t think that’s true that I didn’t say hi,” I tell Boyfriend. “Do you really think I wouldn’t say hi if they said hi to me? That doesn’t sound like me. I mean, I say hi to perfect strangers in elevators!”

  “Well, they think you just ignored them,” Boyfriend says, leading me to ask myself, Was I so immersed in what I was reading on my computer that I didn’t hear them say hi to me? I suppose it could be possible.

  “Well, they don’t say bye to me when they leave,” I tell him, like a petulant child. I know in my gut that Boyfriend is about to tell me I have to be the Bigger Person, because I’m the adult, and because I see that Boyfriend is also suffering from Guilty Father Syndrome, where he’s both an ATM machine and, now, a mediator.

  “You have to be the bigger person,” Boyfriend says. Inwardly, I snort. Outwardly, I let out a huge sigh. I called it.

  To me, especially since they moved into my house, it’s a simple matter of respect. In non-blended families, a parent may get angry if they walk in and their kids don’t say hi first. But when you’re in a blended household and two out of the four children aren’t biologically your own, respect isn’t automatic. It has to be earned. Clearly, we had some work to do in the respect-earning department. But I have always tried to be respectful to his children.

  “So, I’m supposed to say hi to your kids first, even if they are already home when I walk in?” I press. I want to make sure we’re on the same page here so that I’m tiptoeing over this eggshell correctly. Heaven forbid I misstep. Boyfriend’s answer, of course, is yes. Yes, I should be the Bigger Person and say hi first, because I’m the adult and they are just children and this is a really stupid thing to fight over, so what’s the big deal if I say hi first? Honestly.

  I don’t think Boyfriend realizes that his children are old enough to also be Bigger People. They’re not toddlers. Shouldn’t the respect be bottom up?

  Ultimately, I choose to not let this be a hill I’m willing to die on. Maybe it’s popping up only now because th
ey are pre-teens and hypersensitive. Still, I’ll make sure my hi’s and bye’s are loud and emphatic and full of syrupy sweetness so as to leave no doubt that I’m acknowledging them.

  I’ll do it. But now it feels forced. And I’m not a very good actor.

  I can’t help but think of my friend who married a man with two children and later went on to have a child with him. They couldn’t make blended splendid. She is single now, and I’m pretty sure she has “I will never blend again” scrawled on her bathroom mirror in red lipstick. If it’s not tattooed on her forehead yet, I’m confident it will be soon. She’s pretty fucking emphatic about it. Turns out, while it wasn’t the only issue that resulted in the demise of her blended family, the stupid fucking Hi/Bye Fight was right up there with all of the other more normal shit couples fight about.

  “There were so, so many issues, but the one I can remember best is that whenever his children stayed with us, they barely even grunted a greeting to me. Wait, sometimes they would grunt, but I would never get a proper hello,” she says.

  Out of all their fights over their four years of marriage and blending, this Hi/Bye Fight is the one that sticks out for her the most. Probably because it was so fucking stupid and seemed like such a non-issue, and yet it was one of the biggest issues of all.

  Bonus Daughters really opened the flood gates by telling on me. I feel duly chastised. And it does make me wonder whether this would be an issue at all if we had purchased or rented a new house. One of my friends, who was contemplating blending houses by moving into his girlfriend’s house with her two children and his two children, came up with a pretty brilliant way of making sure all the kids felt equal, even if they were going to move into her place. He proposed they would all get to pick their own bedrooms.

  “I told my girlfriend that the only way I’d move myself and my children into her house is if we started from scratch, and that meant even the bedrooms that were her children’s. I thought the only way it would be fair was if we chose sticks, so that each child would feel that it was all of their homes.” His girlfriend refused, just like I never once entertained the thought of Rowan having to move her bedroom. In fact, Boyfriend feels bad that, unlike at their mom’s house, his girls have to share a bedroom. However, there are only so many bedrooms in the house. And their bedroom — the finished basement — is massive, so it’s not like they are crammed into a small space.

  “But so many kids share bedrooms,” I tell Boyfriend. “What’s the big deal? They have the largest room in the house. They have a fireplace! We built them a walk-in closet!” It’s true that in traditional families, many siblings share rooms. It’s far from the end of the world. In fact, from what I’ve seen, it can actually bring children closer. And, no, there was no way I was taking my chances on picking straws. What if Rowan had ended up with a short straw and had to not only share her space, but also move rooms and share a room with someone she had practically just met? That was one upheaval I wouldn’t ever entertain.

  But, maybe, Boyfriend’s children never entirely felt quite at home when they stayed with us — and thus the reason for the Hi/Bye Fight popping up. Maybe they became a little resentful over the years, knowing my daughter had her own room and their brother had his own room. Not only did Boyfriend’s children never get a chance to pick their rooms, but when I think about it, they didn’t even get to pick where they sat at the dinner table, with Rowan always eating in her chair and me always eating in mine.

  Because of the Hi/Bye Fight, lines have been drawn, and over something seemingly frivolous. All residents of this house can be extremely stubborn. The fact I make their dad happy and they are in my house (fine, “our” house) seems to matter to them not at all, not to the girls and not to Boyfriend. I think this battle has resulted in the rose-coloured glasses officially coming off.

  I keep reminding myself, Rebecca, you are the adult. Why do you care so much about this? They’re just kids. Kids can act like jerks, whether they are related by blood or not.

  But this fight screams to me that it’s not really about saying a simple word, like “hello” or “goodbye.” It’s about so much more. It’s about what we say when we walk into each other’s world. It’s about the respect we feel the other is due. It’s about the overall importance of recognizing the other people in our lives.

  We are a part of each other’s lives, not me a part of theirs and they a part of mine. Isn’t that what being a family is all about? Aren’t we supposed to be pieces of a puzzle, rather than a square peg in a round hole? Apparently, we’re not so much blending as we are playing an aggressive game of bumper cars. I’ve already owned up to the fact that Boyfriend and I basically discussed, um, nothing before we moved in together, so I guess it’s no surprise that we never worked out how we’d deal with inter-family drama.

  “We discussed everything before we got married. And I was only twenty-five years old,” a new friend told me recently at a cocktail party. She married a man with two children, and they would go on to have one of their own. “All my friends were like, ‘Why are you talking about such serious issues?’ But we discussed everything, from how much I would chip in for rent, to how many kids we wanted, to how to deal with the exes, to how to discipline the kids.” She’s happily married. Even a twenty-five-year-old had the wherewithal to discuss practically every issue that could arise, which obviously makes me feel like Boyfriend and I were complete twits when we blended.

  Still, the next time Boyfriend’s daughters walk into the house, I stand at attention like a fucking Navy SEAL, such is the pressure to not offend now. The incredible amount of stress that comes with this whole stupid hi/bye standoff is ludicrous. I will, henceforth, force myself to give them a warm welcome — the warmest — every time I walk into the room. Let there be no doubt I know they’re here, am happy they’re here, and have acknowledged their presence.

  Once they descend to the basement, only now do I start to wonder if Boyfriend and I should have just sold this place and bought a new one together. Old habits die hard, and I fully admit that I can’t help but think of this as my house still. And maybe that’s the vibe I give off. Or maybe Bonus Daughters feel it simply by virtue of the fact they are well aware they moved into my space. Though they certainly don’t act like it’s not their place, with their homework spread out on the kitchen table, their drawers overflowing with clothes, as they sprawl out on the couch to watch a movie, and when the nanny makes their beds. I think they make themselves quite at home when they’re here, as they should.

  We’ve gone out of our way to make our house their home, but I’m pretty sure they just see my house as a place they have to come visit in order to see their dad and their brother, rather than a home they share with me and Rowan. The house is more like a hotel to them where they can check in or check out when they want to.

  There is something so real and so visceral about this stupid fight. It sounds insane — I know it does. For me and for a lot of people embarking on, or in, blending families, I think this battle is a common trigger that ends the honeymoon phase. Not only that, but it’s an ongoing battle. I went from blissful ignorance that we were all happy in our new life together to feeling like a guest in my own home, like I was the one who had to please the host and be on my best behaviour. Sure, we might not be yelling in each other’s faces or throwing tables through windows, but the spite is real. It’s a perpetual merry-go-round from hell.

  The Hi/Bye Fight will linger, like a bad aftertaste, like when you went to sleep after a drunken night and midnight pizza without brushing your teeth. I realize I make it sound like we’re starting to not like each other. The truth is so much more complicated. There is love in our house. A lot of love. But I’m realizing we are a constant work in progress. We aren’t the well-oiled machine I thought we were.

  Some experts say it can take up to five years for everyone to be comfortable in a blended family, but now I’m beginning to wonder if there is even such a thing as an expert in blended families, because t
he hi/bye war is real and I’ve never read of it in any book or article. No one warns you that you can go from blissful to bullshit years after you blend, completely out of the blue. I never saw this coming, and this, this right here is bullshit, and it’s hit like a manure truck. The only person in the house who seems immune is Baby Holt, mostly because he can’t speak. The baby is the strongest and most durable glue that makes our blended family work. Baby Holt doesn’t give a shit about who says hi or bye first, because he’s just happy to find his belly button.

  · FIVE ·

  Ah, family dinners. Such a lovely opportunity to get together and enjoy a home-cooked (or catered) meal, touching base with grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins, shooting the shit and catching up on our lives. Good times. Until, that is, someone in the family says something that makes you do a double take.

  “It’s just not the same,” Nana says. Those five words will be imprinted in my brain for eternity. The sentence hits me square in the gut. What fresh bullshit is this?

  We’re sitting at dinner, talking about all of the amazing grandchildren she has … but. Yes, there’s a “but.”

  Rowan is with her father and her grandparents tonight. Nana — Boyfriend’s mother — and I are discussing my daughter’s father. I’m not sure how we got on the topic of my ex procreating. Is this something people typically talk about with their mother-in-law from their second marriage? But here we are, two voices among a table filled with Boyfriend’s blood relatives, Nana curious about my ex’s family planning, me wondering why she’s so interested.