Blissfully Blended Bullshit

by Rebecca Eckler

  “I don’t think Rowan’s dad will have more children,” Nana postulates. “So Rowan will be his parents’ only grandchild. Let her grandparents spoil her rotten!”

  I stare blankly at her, not really sure where she is going with this. For whatever reason, I feel the strange need to defend the possibility of my ex growing his family.

  “Well, he could meet and marry someone with children, and then Rowan’s grandparents will have more grandchildren in their lives,” I respond, a tad defensively. I mean, that’s what happened to both Boyfriend’s parents and my parents when Boyfriend and I blended families and households. Suddenly my parents had two new children growing up with their granddaughter. And Boyfriend’s parents suddenly had my daughter in their lives, growing up alongside their biological grandchildren. How has this slipped Nana’s mind?

  “It’s not the same when they’re not your own,” Nana responds.

  I only have a small window of opportunity to respond to her slip or admission, or whatever the fuck it is, that Nana loves her biological grandson not the same as my daughter, who is his sister, for fuck’s sake. I’m in shock, yes. How could I not take this to mean she doesn’t love my daughter as much? That’s what she’s saying, let’s be real. How could she admit this out loud? Why didn’t she think before she spoke? It’s like the first lesson we learn in life, isn’t it?

  “So what you’re really saying is that you don’t love Rowan as much as you do Holt,” I say, clearly miffed. Mama Bear has been poked. I suddenly feel far from a doting daughter-in-law. I’m guarded now, ready to battle on behalf of my daughter, who, frankly, I’ve known longer than both Nana and Boyfriend. I think Nana knows that she has fucked up instantly, upon hearing my straight-to-the-point question, or maybe my response sounds like more of an accusation. I know that she has fucked up. She knows that I know that she fucked up. And I know that she knows that she fucked up. Everything at the moment is really fucked up.

  It’s not the same when they’re not your own? It’s not just a slip of the tongue. It’s a colossal slip of the tongue. Nana knows I’m beyond fiercely protective of my daughter and her well-being.

  Apparently, love in this family is conditional. This is news to me. She may love Rowan, but she loves Holt more because, though they both came from my womb, Holt is her biological grandchild, and that, it seems, makes all the difference. The fact that she’s known my daughter longer than she has known my son doesn’t seem to matter. Apparently, the DNA she doesn’t share with my daughter, but that she does share with my son, tips the scales in her heart.

  At our family gatherings, it’s not alcohol that is the truth serum. It’s cake. There is always a fucking cake. I wonder if Nana, sweet Nana, has had too much cake this evening and, like a child, has spit out this admission due to an uncontrollable sugar high. How could she admit such a thing, especially to me, the mother of both these children? I’d always — stupidly, I guess — operated under the assumption that she now considered Rowan one of her own. Maybe that was foolish. Maybe I should have known. But I didn’t. My heart hurts.

  Thankfully, everyone else at the table is immersed in their own conversations, or this could have potentially deteriorated into a bitter family feud. I feel a knee-jerk reaction to stand up and lose my ever-loving mind on Nana, defending my daughter’s right to equal love. My brain is reeling. I can’t let this go. I need to say something without being overly snide, since, honestly, Nana has a kind heart and would do anything for her loved ones, who I thought included my daughter. Had I been fooled all these years? Or am I being too harsh, considering old people often say stupid things. Was this a brain fart?

  Maybe I shouldn’t question her. Maybe I should let this go. Maybe, like normal, nuclear families, I should pretend she hasn’t said anything and shove some cake in my mouth.

  It is painful to see Nana trying to stutter her way out of … what? Her truth?

  “Well, it’s different. I mean, I mean, I’ve known Rowan for years,” she says, her face now a blotchy red, and this time it isn’t the result of a menopausal hot flash. She’s clearly embarrassed. As I think she should be.

  Yes, she’s known my daughter for two years longer than Holt, in fact. But who’s counting. Oh, right. I am.

  Will I ever look at Nana the same, knowing she doesn’t have the same sort of love for both my children? It may have been a slip of the tongue, but her words aren’t just out there in the dining room. They are out there in the universe. Worse, they are stuck in my brain. Contrary to what I thought, family isn’t family, exclusive of when you come into each other’s lives. At the very least, love isn’t equal when it comes to the family you gain along the way while blending.

  Maybe deep down a part of me always has wondered about this. Maybe there has always been a part of me that didn’t want to acknowledge that this amazing, wonderful woman didn’t consider herself to have the same role in Rowan’s life that I thought she did. Maybe it’s always been an unconscious fear that the lines between biological and non-biological weren’t as blurred as I hoped and prayed they should be or actually are. Those words, “It’s just not the same,” expose Nana’s bias. They also expose a wound that maybe I haven’t done a good enough job protecting. Her admission forces me to think, and question, what love really means in a blended family. Do I love Boyfriend’s children as much as the two who came out of me? Do I love my biological daughter differently than I love Boyfriend? Love is confusing at best in blended families. Love isn’t equal.

  Nana was just the first to come out and say it out loud.

  So maybe love isn’t the same. Even if Boyfriend and I make it to our tenth anniversary, it won’t be before I celebrate my daughter’s seventeenth birthday. Unlike traditional families — first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby carriage — when you’re in a blended family and there are children involved, you’ll always have known your biological children longer than you’ve known your partner. In a blended family, you’ve met your children first. You have loved your children first. You have raised them, your way, first. You have bonded with your children first.

  Many of my adult friends are children of divorce and grew up in blended families, with non-biological parental figures and non-biological siblings. They are the first to say that they know they were treated differently by non-biological family members. They may use the word “treated,” but I wonder if they really mean “loved.”

  “Of course she loves her biological grandson more,” my friend says to me later when I’m crying into the phone with rage and sadness. “It’s completely different with stepchildren, and even more so when you’re the mother or father. I personally feel that to pretend differently only causes bigger problems. I love my stepson, but I don’t love him like a mother, because he has a mother and I’m very aware of that. Just like my mom doesn’t love my husband’s child from his first marriage like she loves the ones who came out of me.”

  My friend married a man with a three-year-old and then went on to have two more children with him, so she’s not without a form of reference for what I dealt with tonight, but I’m surprised that she isn’t taking my side here, as friends usually do, whether they agree with you or not. But my friend may be right. Maybe pretending that love is equal causes bigger problems. Actually, make that a yes. Pretending that love is equal does cause bigger problems, when I look back at some of the issues Boyfriend and I have dealt with while blending and the feelings I’m having.

  My friend’s parents, after all, split up when she was a pre-teen, so she has had step-parents for most of her life. Plus, she’s in a blended family, so she sees the question of love from both sides. But I’m glad that she sets me straight by being truthful, because that’s also being a good girlfriend, the kind of girlfriend who will tell you that your boobs look lopsided in the dress you are wearing.

  But I’m still stung by Nana’s words and I wish that my friend had at least said that I had a right to feel how I feel. Had I really wanted to hear the t
ruth? Maybe Nana had just finally broke and this was her way of saying, “Let’s not pretend.”

  But we were doing so well pretending! A lot of people pretend!

  “The hardest part of blending, for me, is for sure treating all the children the same,” another friend admits to me. I call a lot of friends to commiserate. Sometimes you just want a bunch of perspectives, hoping at least one friend is all, “Yeah, man. I’m totally with you!”

  “I find it very hard to love non-biological ones. I am a fierce mama, and when his kids are being mean to mine, or I perceive him as favouring his kids in a fight they are having, I suddenly become full of rage,” my friend continues. She has witnessed her husband’s kids picking on hers and took it out on her husband. I totally do the same with Boyfriend when I feel he doesn’t treat Rowan the same as he does his own children, though, fortunately, our children never pick on each other. Boyfriend will never admit to not treating Rowan the same as he does his own children, which leaves me to solo-parent Rowan even after he moves in and sees all I have to do for her. On a day-to-day basis, responsibility for her falls on me and me alone.

  Another one of my friends also grew up in a blended household. Her father died when she was only twelve years old, and her mother got remarried a little while later, to a man who had a child. She’s always described her mother’s new husband as a loving parental figure who was caring and generous. When I spoke to her recently about what Nana said, she kind of laughed. But not a “ha ha” laugh. More like a “Fuck, man, I know where’s she’s coming from” laugh.

  “My mom’s husband did for us what he did for his own kid. He sent us to camp and paid for university. Not many men his age, forty, would take on a woman and her two kids and dog, especially in the early eighties, when this was not the norm,” she says. Although she had a fabulous relationship with him, she says she did feel like she was treated differently.

  “My mother would say she felt bad for her husband’s son, because his parents were divorced. According to her, divorce was worse than the sudden death of a parent. I disagree, if you can imagine! I felt jealous that he still had a parent to go to and get away from the dynamics of the blended family.”

  Mostly she felt jealous, and rightly so, that he got to go to his other parent, because he had another parent. “But then he lived with us full-time, and I felt annoyed because we were the same age and in the same grade and he was strange and I hated having a new brother,” she admits.

  No one expects people to automatically love their in-laws once they marry, and the popularity of mother-in-law memes is proof of this. Dear Mother-in-law, please do not tell me how to raise my kids. I’m married to one of yours and he still needs some work. Or, I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life being judged by your mother.

  I guess, if I’m being honest, the question of unconditional love was always on my mind, especially when we started introducing our kids to each other. It only amplified as our extended family met our respective children, to whom they were now related by common-law marriage but not by blood. Is blood really thicker than water? If blending families is any indication, the answer is a resounding “Yes.”

  My parents, even if it’s our weekend with Boyfriend’s children, will often invite just my daughter to go out with them on some fun all-day excursion. My parents love spending one-on-one time with Rowan because she is, by far, their easiest and most outgoing grandchild. She is always up for everything and never complains about anything. She’s a people pleaser.

  My parents are friendly to Boyfriend — my mother will bring him her famous homemade pea soup Boyfriend loves so much — but I can see that they still aren’t sure how to act around him. Sure, they are friendly to him, but I wish they would put more effort into getting to know him. My dad loves golf. What I wouldn’t give to have him suggest they hit the green together. My heart would burst (and my head explode from shock) if my mother invited Boyfriend’s children to go along on their excursions with Rowan. No, my parents aren’t heartless jerks. I think it just doesn’t occur to them that Boyfriend and his children are a part of my family now. Frankly, I also don’t think they’ve quite gotten over my split with Rowan’s father, even after a decade. Maybe they are simply gun-shy to get to know Boyfriend’s family. Once bitten, twice shy! Still, they never forget Boyfriend’s children’s birthdays or graduations and they give them presents. They ask about his children when we talk on the phone. My parents care. But do they love?

  Turns out, as much as Nana’s words sting, my parents feel the same way about Boyfriend’s children. If it isn’t already clear from the lack of socializing, an almost terrifying car crash brings it to the fore.

  It is a cold as fuck January morning and my snowbird parents are driving to Florida, where they will spend the next four months in the warmth, away from the brutal Canadian winter. Less than twenty-four hours after they leave, a text pops up on my phone.

  “Our car skidded onto a slippery off-ramp, and now we’re stuck in Detroit while waiting for new parts. Just our luck!” my mom writes in a group chat to me and my three brothers. Luckily, they weren’t hurt. I wish that was the end of their miserable texts, but as the day wears on, I am progressively more annoyed as the texts continue to pour in, giving updates every hour, it seems, complaining about the shitty hotel they have to stay in and how they’ll have to wait another two days for new parts for their car. I want to stab myself in the eyes.

  I call them — my mother now has her own iPhone — because I’m worried, but also to yell at her.

  “What the fuck are you complaining about?” I shout at my mother when she picks up the phone.

  I am, by far, the most emotional, most impatient, and most sensitive of their children, and, unlike my brothers, I have no trouble letting them know how I really feel. They are well aware of my flare-ups when things don’t go my way or even if someone says something stupid at our family gatherings. The fact I have no patience for this shit is hardly news.

  “You are lucky to be alive! It could have been much, much worse. You could have been killed!” I scream at my mother. “Do you realize that?” Like honestly, they slipped on a goddamn icy off-ramp on a highway. So sorry that means you need new car parts. Better than needing a new liver!

  “You’re right,” my mother responds, somewhat defeatedly, even though I’m trying to both give her a pep talk and remind her to be grateful that they weren’t hurt or, worse, killed. Waiting for car parts and having to stay in a shitty hotel are pretty much hash-tag-first-world-problems. For real.

  “You could have died and then you wouldn’t see your grandchildren grow up!” I continue, driving the point home. I’m on a roll. “So stop complaining about your fucking shitty hotel and just be thankful you are alive!” I think my mother needs a fucking reality check, and I’m way too happy to provide one. I yell at her like I yell at my children if they start to cross the street without looking both ways. I sound harsh and angry, but it comes from a place of love.

  “You’re right. I have five wonderful grandchildren,” my mother responds.

  Oh Jesus! You too?

  My mother seems to have forgotten about Boyfriend’s children, which would make her a grandmother of seven, not five.

  What is wrong with everyone’s memory? Maybe I should suggest to all of Holt’s grandparents that they invest in some ginkgo biloba. I’ll even buy it for them! Last time I checked, my family expanded when Boyfriend and I joined each other’s lives. Why is it I’m the only one who seems to think so?

  Since I know my parents are shaken from their car accident, I don’t have it in me to say, “You actually have seven grandchildren,” which would make her feel worse. I’ve already made my mother cry. I’ve already made Nana feel guilty. I may as well yell at myself too at this point, because, upon being forced to think about it, I do not love all the children equally. Well, maybe I do love them equally, but I’m way more protective, supportive, and fiercely loyal of the two who came out of me — which means I must tr
eat Boyfriend’s children and my children differently, or not the same, no?

  Maybe I’m a big hypocrite. Maybe I’m so mad at Nana and at my mother because they seem to readily admit what I have been forcing myself to feel is not the case. They are forcing me to accept what is real and true.

  It is different. It’s just not the same.

  I hang up the phone after ripping my mother a new one, and forgiveness washes over me like a warm shower. I no longer am angry over what Nana said. It would be entirely hypocritical of me to remain mad at Nana for saying pretty much how all the grandparents in our blended family feel. They are all old-ish, and sometimes you can’t teach an old dog new tricks; you need to give them a free pass and just eat that fucking cake.

  No one asks parents who share biological kids if they love their kids equally. This is not an issue in first-time families. But let’s be real: parents totally have favourite kids, at any given time, although they would never admit it. It’s easier to bond with a kid with whom you share interests. It just is. But when you couple with someone who already has children, people have no qualms about asking you if you love all of the kids in the house equally. They seem to give no fucks that you might consider it an insanely personal question. People can be very brave. Or very curious. Or just plain nosey. But no one ever asks outright. No, no. They buffer the hyper-personal question with a lead-in to soften the blow.

  It usually starts with, “I have a friend who is now in a blended family and she says she doesn’t love her partner’s children as much as their own. You’re in a blended family. What do you think?”

  First, what I think is that there are a lot of people out there who have friends who want to know the truth about loving someone else’s children. The people who have asked me, and still ask me, about what family and love mean when you blend at least have the sense to know that it is an intimate question. They always seem to ask in a hushed tone, as if we were in a monastery or they were in need of a tampon and wanted to know if I happened to have an extra one in my purse. It’s like they acknowledge it’s a question we might not want the world to know the answer to. It’s not that I find this question about love inappropriate. I know a lot of people have and will and do struggle with this question, including me. Everyone wants to know if, in a blended family, you can really love all of the kids equally. Every house is different. I can only speak about my own.