It’s a Sunday afternoon. The sky is full of grey clouds, thick and expansive enough that you cannot see where one ends and the next begins. As the earth begins to absorb warm rain I dash to the door “I’ll be right back baby” I call to my child. I grab our largest house plant, ZuZu the ZZ Plant, and haul her heavy pot off the window sill carrying her outside. I’d been telling myself I’d do this for months, take advantage of the rain to give her a much needed shower, rinsing away a heavy layer of dust that’s accumulated over the last three years since my child’s dad dropped her off one day. A gift when she wasn’t feeling well.
Inside again I light an incense, lavender. My Spotify playlist is doing exactly what needs doing, from Lianne La Havas’ “Please Don’t Make Me Cry” to Sir’s “Still Blue”. A reminder to myself that I’m allowed to take it easy.
This scene is serene but in my mind there’s war.
I sat across the table with my daughter for lunch about an hour prior to this moment and a silly conversation about doing make up with her cousin whom she’ll see again soon spun its way into commentary about how sometimes her soon-to-be step-mother gives her a peck on the lips. An innocent display of affection and adoration, I assume. My soul recoiled. I smiled, offered a quiet “ooooh”, and kept the conversation going.
My recent google searches reveal what’s truly heavy in my mind and heart these days: what is the role of a step-mother? Call me naïve, but I grew up with both my biological mother and father married. My immediate group of aunts and uncles were as well. Grandparents too. I didn’t experience step-parents up close and intimately in my life and now I’m sitting on the other side of Brooklyn catching droplets of stories about the one my daughter’s about to have in casual conversations. Sometimes these remarks feel more like daggers, my baby girl couldn’t know any better and it’s absolutely no fault of her own. Each time I’m forced to pluck one of the daggers out of my heart I bandage my own wound and keep it moving without batting an eye. It’s not up to my kiddo to manage my emotions and I love that she shares with me so freely.
So as my daughter enjoyed some playtime in her room and I sat on the couch watching ZuZu catch the rain, my mind is inundated with words I’d like to throw like punches. I breathe. But this is may be the 467th time I’ve had to breathe through this so, to keep it really real, I’m over it. But for some reason I’m not.
This is the thing I’m struggling with: I didn’t invite you here. I never sat down with you for coffee or a mimosa and welcomed you in. I wasn’t offered the respect of a proper introduction. At every turn, truths were withheld and I had to just accept what was laid before me. For a stranger to be offered the opportunity to build such deep intimacy with the baby who grew in my belly, who changed my entire being, who tells me she knows when I’m near because she can smell me, whose insurance premium I cover, who I would die for and has created new reasons for me to live a full life; that feels like a criminal offense to me.
I get it, she’s adored and loved and cared for by this person. But that doesn’t make this feel any better. It actually stings that much more. I didn’t ask for a third party to witness my motherhood flaws from a far. To stand in the gap when I’m absent. To create a point of comparison. If she were an evil, crooked nosed witch I could hate her loudly and liberally but since I hear she’s not I have to scratch a little deeper and address the real emotions. Motherhood is hard, it changes everything about you, it’s often thankless, there are invisible responsibilities and to-dos constantly swirling around me. For someone else to get an extension of the “mother” title and the affection from the one I’m raising is gut wrenching in its worst form and eye-roll inducing in it's mildest. I’m praying to get to the indifference stage. Maybe one day appreciation. And to try to pinpoint one emotion would be futile. It’s a Long Island Iced Tea of emotions from the negative side of the feelings wheel all coming at me at once in unexpected intervals.
Of course when two people who have a child choose to dissolve a relationship this part is both optional and inevitable but is there no protocol here? It’s been made clear to me that I’m not the one allowed to make the rules so, who is? Certainly can’t be the person who’s only in my child’s life on the contingency of a relationship with her father. Hummm.
For my baby girl’s sake and my own, I breathe. I focus on the words leaving Masego’s mouth. I remember that joy rests in my heart because God put it there. I recall a conversation about 7 months ago with a close friend about relinquishing control. I remind myself to look up some books and podcasts about radical acceptance. I remember I’m loved and that losing another second to these thoughts would be the absolute worst way to spent my Sunday.
Now fully drenched, I retrieve ZuZu from outside and place her back on the sill, then grab my phone to make a birthday FaceTime and resume living in moments of love.