by Paula Deen
But Michelle was a different story. In her book, I was a dead ringer for Cinderella’s wicked stepmother.
Well, except for my relationship with Michelle, things finally did start to settle down. I can’t tell you the relief that my boys felt when they found out that the new man in my life was financially secure, had a very good job, and did not need my money. I was adamantly against a prenuptial agreement, which I knew was popular, but, in my mind, kind of unsavory. To me, asking somebody to sign a prenup almost makes you feel like you’re going into a marriage expecting it to fail. You are discussing how you’re going to handle things if the marriage fails instead of talking about how you’re going to make it succeed. Look—I’m no dummy—I was going to protect my boys’ money and I was going to see to it that nobody was going to take what was rightfully theirs. I knew I could do this through lawyers, setting up special trusts, for example. Michael and I made an appointment with my attorney, and we wrote our wills. We made sure that should something happen to the other, each of us would always have a place to live. But Michael’s money would go to his children, and my money would go to my children. At the time of both of our deaths, our four children would come together and split the property and share equally. I did not want to start a marriage off saying, “Listen, you son of a bitch, I don’t trust you.” I can understand why Donald Trump would want a prenup, but it was not for me. In no time, my children came to have a lot of respect and love for Michael. Of course they love their daddy, Jimmy Deen, but there was enough love inside them that they could allow another man to come into their mother’s life. The same with Anthony.
But that daddy’s girl! That Michelle.
Michael was definitely caught in the middle of two women whom he loved more than anything in the world. It was a very uncomfortable situation for him because the bottom line was that his daughter and I were both jealous of each other, and jealous of the power that each had over the man we loved. Meanness passed between us too many times. I didn’t quite know how to handle it, but I knew I’d better learn because I was trying to be the grown-up in the situation. In many ways, I was startin’ to love Michelle because her daddy loved her and he’d told me so many wonderful things about her. But the truth was that I didn’t like her, and she neither loved nor liked me.
Michael and I had looked high and low for a house to live in, but we couldn’t find any land that was prettier than the property on Turners Creek that he owned. He had four floating docks, which he rented out, and one dilapidated dock house that he’d converted into a home for him and his family, and in which the children had grown up. Finally, Michael convinced me that the best thing to do would be to tear down the old house and build exactly the house we both wanted in its stead on his property right on the water. This was the plan: while Michael’s house was being torn down, Anthony, home from military school, and Michelle would move into my house with Michael and me. We planned to create wonderful new rooms for them in the new house. I was so excited thinking how I would spend any amount to please the children of the man I loved.
But when the kids moved in with us, I also remember thinking to myself that first day, I need some control here. I’m going to get this girl who dislikes me to understand that this is my house.
So Michelle has a load of dirty laundry and she says with real attitude, “I would like for my clothes to be washed separately.” I remember replying, “Well, I don’t want them washed separately. We might not have a full load, but when we throw yours and Anthony’s clothes in, we can get a full load.”
What difference did it make if she wanted to do her laundry separately? Why could I not have been kind enough and generous enough to say, “Okay, darlin’, that’s fine with me”? Why? What was in me that I could not do that?
One day, she and Anthony came in, and Michelle was spittin’ angry, and I had no idea why. Michael and I were working on Anthony’s room. I’d just excitedly said to my stepson, “I’d like to do so and so and so and so here,” when Michelle turned to Anthony and asked, “Is that the way you want it?”
It was clear that she was letting her brother know that if he didn’t want the room the way I was designing it, she would fight me. She would go to battle for him.
I turned around and walked away and left the three of them in that bedroom. I was trying to choose my battles, and if it meant the way a room was decorated wasn’t to my taste, I wasn’t ready to fight. So I came back downstairs, trying to think and calm myself. When I turned to go back upstairs, Michelle was walking down the stairs, and I was hanging over the lower balcony when she said, “I would like to have a meeting with you.”
It sounded awfully smart-ass, and so, in my own best smart-ass tone, I answered, “Well, yes, ma’am. When would you like to hold court with me?” I was about at the end of my rope.
She looked at me and said, “You are such a bitch. You’ve ripped my family apart.”
Then she stormed out. My heart about broke.
It finally dawned on me that the house we were tearin’ down was the house she had been raised in with her mother, her father, and her brother. Beautiful new rooms in a beautiful new house didn’t count for nothin’. It was her house she wanted, and as she stood and watched it being knocked to the ground, it knocked the breath out of her. I was decorating the hell out of her home. It was worse than knocking on the door of your own home and having a stranger say you could come in. Looking back, I’m disappointed in myself that I was not more understanding and more compassionate.
It sure looked as though this family was never going to blend. Michael had told me on many occasions that it seemed as if Michelle actively tried to find something specific wrong with me—a reason to justify the fact that she didn’t like me. That was pretty obvious. She came up with nothin’ in the specifics department, he reported, but she didn’t fall in love with me anyways.
I remember one awful night, before Michael and I wed, I’d finally broken up with that married man, and I had some things of his that had to be returned. He asked if he could come over to retrieve his stuff, and I told Michael, who didn’t seem too happy to hear that I was going to see that man again. Michael and Michelle planned to have dinner at a restaurant, and when I’d finally said good-bye to my old lover for good, I jumped into my car and headed straight to that restaurant. I was so thrilled to be starting my new life with Michael, totally unencumbered by my past.
I rushed into the restaurant and I saw that Michael and Michelle were wholly engrossed in each other. When they saw me, guess what? They completely ignored me. Ignored me. Like I wasn’t there. Michelle, it was clear, was not one bit happy I’d shown up to take away her daddy’s attention. And as I stood over the two of them, I could see that they were not about to let me into their little closed circle—not one inch.
I felt mortified.
“I’ve made a horrible mistake here,” I told the two of them. I’ve just formally, completely, and totally ended a ten-year relationship, and was so excited to rush back to the two of you and be embraced—and now, oh my God.
I ran out and home and couldn’t stop weeping.
When Michael finally came home, he explained that he’d felt horrible about my seeing the man even one more time. She’s back from her date, he thought when I rushed into the restaurant. I don’t know what Michelle thought—she must have been happy to see me ignored by her dad. The bad feelings between Michael and me passed as soon as we talked about it, but Michelle and I never exchanged a word about that terrible scene.
About a month before Michael and I were to be married, I was miserable; it had gotten to the point where Michelle and I, living in the same home, weren’t even speaking to each other. It was so upsetting to me that I actually started having heart palpitations. I went to my doctor, and told her, “My nerves are almost shot. I dread going home. I just want to stay at work all night long and not go home.”
“Paula, you cannot continue to operate this way,” the doctor told me. She started me on Zoloft. I had t
o get a little help because I could not allow myself to jump on every roller coaster that came by. I had to keep myself level and grounded. Here I was, all the wedding details had been arranged, we were going to be married on television, and I was ready to back out. The truth was, though I loved Michael, I just didn’t think it was going to work. I thought Michelle would see to that.
Lord, what am I going to do? I prayed. This marriage is going to end before it ever gets started. But because of all the work that everybody, including the people on the Food Network, had put in, I could not let ’em down. I decided that I would go through with the wedding, and if I had to come out later and say it didn’t work, I would just deal with it.
You know, I always wanted a large family. I remember begging my mother when I was in high school to please have another baby. When I married Jimmy Deen I would have loved to have had five or six kids even though I knew I couldn’t financially take care of them. Mother Nature took care of that, and I’m lucky to have the two that I have. But I wanted a large family because when a family gets big, it’s more interesting; there are more personalities, more interesting psyches that go into the mix. That’s what I hoped for when I met Michael and his two kids.
In my own defense, I have to say that I never have been one to hold a grudge. I think the person whom a grudge does the most damage to is the grudge holder. It will eat away at you like a cancer. But I still would not let my guard down. I felt like even if I were to get a full day of peace with Michelle, it would be short-lived. Strange thing is, at this point, we weren’t fighting. We simply ignored each other.
So Michael and I were married, and for a long while it was still tense between this child and me. I knew that if there was a big blowup, Michelle was so full of emotion, she’d be so hurt that the damage might last forever. Michelle’s a little teapot: you know it’s fixin’ to boil and that little cap’s going to come up and it’ll start to whistle. Well, Michelle can go for so long and hold all these feelings back, and then they have to come out. Then she starts whistling, and she ain’t whistling Dixie.
I finally saw this just after the wedding when she and her daddy had a very, very lively conversation in the front yard. I stayed in the house, too frightened to move; I didn’t want to be part of it. Michelle was wild with anger. When her daddy tried to reason with her, it just didn’t work: she needed to get everything out and cleanse her soul and she wasn’t paying him any mind at all. She was wild with anger. But that was the turning point. Her father very firmly but lovingly explained to her that I was his wife and partner, and that we so wanted her to be our daughter and friend and play a huge role in our family. If she chose not to, we would both be heartbroken but we’d understand.
The next day she apologized to me. I told her that I certainly accepted her apology, but I don’t remember saying I was sorry. I have to give Michelle credit because even if I was the grown-up, Michelle has always been the one who is first able to come up and make amends.
I had not behaved exactly in a way that made me proud of myself either. I didn’t necessarily misbehave, but I didn’t act the way I wish I had. I reacted instead of acted.
One day not too long ago after Michael’s heated argument with Michelle, Michelle and I had a wonderful conversation. We were sittin’ in my bedroom talking. I was feeling pretty desperate, but I knew I had to keep the conversation going if I was ever going to reach the true heart of this child.
I said, “Michelle, hon, I just feel that I have to tell you that you have the ability to break up this marriage. I’m fifty-nine years old. I spent twenty-seven years fighting in a marriage, and then I fought to start my business. I’m done fighting, and I will walk off if there’s fighting ahead, because right now in my life, all I want is peace and contentment.”
I think she realized at that very moment that she certainly didn’t want to be responsible for the breakup of this marriage. Deep down, she wanted to like me. She wanted to love me. And I wanted to have a daughter. I wanted Michelle.
As I write these words a year later, Michelle is lying in my bed with her head on my belly. The dogs are curled up on her belly. Anthony is sitting at the foot of Michael’s chair, leaning back against his daddy’s legs. My sons, Jamie and Bobby, watching television, are a lot older than Michael’s kids—Jamie is old enough to be Anthony’s dad if he’d made a mistake—but they have a world of love and respect for their new sister and brother.
Thanks to the Lord, now we have memories together; we’re truly a family. The other day I read something that gladdened my heart. After five years, said a researcher, stepfamilies are more stable than first marriages. They experience most of their troubles in the first two years—and then they rise above them.
The things that are most worth having are those you have to wait on, and my relationship with Michelle was definitely worth the wait. I want the world to know that today there’s not one thing on this planet I would change about her and maybe not one thing I’d even change about our early time together, because although the way she reacted to our relationship hurt me, it also says what kind of person she is and how much she values family. Coming to understand and respect each other just took a while longer than either of us would have liked it to. So, she’s my daughter, and Anthony is my precious teenage sometimes-pain-in-the-ass son (because his room is a mess and he won’t shut off a light or pick up a shirt if he had twelve mothers telling him to do it).
I’ve told an awful lot of private things about us, but creating a happy family was probably the most crucial element to Michael’s and my happiness. Family is our currency; the love of family is what moves this family. Even if we have bad arguments, we know we’ll be together in the end. It’s all for one and one for all. And, listen, y’all—it’s okay if we talk about it ourselves, but damn sure nobody else better talk about us. I’d like to give some space in my book to what Michelle has to say about a blended family—our family, to be specific. I’ve offered her the rest of this chapter with the promise not to edit her comments.
Michelle says:
For so long after my parents’ divorce, it was Anthony, my dad, and me—just the three of us. Then when Anthony went away to school, it was just Dad and me, and we grew extremely close. Dad had never planned on getting married again. We just never thought that would happen. But I remember the first time he said, “I’ve met someone who’s become a good friend of mine, and I want you to meet her.”
So I met Paula, and we all went out on the boat and it was wonderful. How could you not like her? But it wasn’t long after that when Dad moved in with her, and their relationship started looking serious, and that’s when it began to get harder on me. I was in Savannah’s Armstrong State University Nursing School, nineteen years old, and Anthony was off at high school in South Carolina. I wanted to stay in our family home, so when Dad moved in with Paula, I was alone in the house. Going from a family of four to a family of three, and then a family of two, and then, well, I was all alone. I missed my dad something fierce.
I know I was jealous of Paula because I always had my daddy wrapped around my little finger like a piece of string, and suddenly he’d broken that tie. Before, when I wanted something, or if I was lonely, I could cry and cry on the phone and get whatever I wanted. In fact, if Daddy heard me crying, he’d come home from wherever he was in ten minutes. But when Paula came into the picture, it was the first time ever that I didn’t come first in his life. It was an awful position for him because here he was being pulled in two different directions by two people he loved. Look, I never hated Paula. But from the time that I was seventeen and things in my family began to change in a major way, I learned that it takes me a longer time than anyone else to adjust. Change is difficult for me—that’s just a part of who I am. It was my resistance to change that was telling me to reject the new woman in Dad’s life. If she left the picture, we could all be alone and together again.
Initially, what really freaked me out was that my family home was being torn down. I remem
ber Anthony telling me, “Michelle, you can always have your memories, whether the actual house is there or not.” But I spent many hours shedding tears over that. It was mainly because I thought I was never going to have a home or my family again.
Well, anyway, it took time, but I finally realized that Paula was all about family. That helped me kind of jump the jealousy hurdle with her. I started spending the night once in a while over there in her apartment. We started having big parties together—her friends and mine, her family and us. It takes me a while to let someone in, to show them who I am, and Paula seemed to finally get that. She wasn’t trying to rush things anymore. I can’t remember how long Paula and my dad had been dating when I finally looked at the two of them and realized, Wow, what a match! How happy they both are, and how happy they make each other. Maybe this will all work out for me, also. Maybe.
It could have been so much worse. It could have ended badly. And Paula, after everything we’ve gone through, is still able to empathize and understand and love me for who I am, and treat me as if I’m her own daughter. I just think that says so much about who she is.
We worked at it, I promise you. It took time before we could give to each other what’s called unconditional love. You know, a couple of years ago, we all went on a cruise together and it wasn’t all fun. This past year, we went on another family vacation, and it was a blast, just terrific. I started to feel about Paula and Jamie and Bobby as if they were my own blood and not only connected through marriage.
One of my biggest hurdles was getting to actually love Paula, not just respect her for everything she’s achieved and for what she’s brought to my dad. See, I’m also extremely close to my mother. I had to see that loving Paula did not mean a minute’s less love for my mother. I now believe 100 percent that a person can have many mothers. When I accepted that is probably when I did open up my heart. And although Paula is often like a rock star with the attention she gets from her fans, she never created a situation where it was a competition between her and my mom. And here’s my secret: I had a little therapy to help me work through everything too. It taught me how I could open up and love my two mothers. I recommend it highly for anyone who’s in a blended family.