Dear Daughter...A Guest Post

Today  I have a snapper who has asked me to share this beautifully written piece about stepmothers and their children on her behalf. So we have a guest post! I am a stepmother, so this hits near and dear to my heart. Get your tissues ready, this is both poignant and beautiful. Hope you enjoy! And be sure and comment to encourage this brave lady to start her very own blog, so we can follow her!

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Dear Daughter,

Thank you for making me smile, and for lighting my world with your hugs and kisses and your calls for me when I leave your sight. Thank you for every silly secret, every laugh, and every moment that you have given me that I never thought I would want or need or grow to cherish. Thank you for loving me.

I feel like I know you, but at the same time like you’re a stranger. You’re only three, almost four, although you deny to your bones that you’ll ever be anything but “THREE”. It’s your favorite number. Elsa is your favorite person, kitties are your favorite pets, and Clifford and George are tied for your favorite imaginary animals. Your favorite book is the Man in the Moon, and your favorite food is spaghetti. You also love chicken sandwiches. Your favorite color was pink until last month, then suddenly it was yellow. When I asked you why it changed, your answer broke my heart just a little bit. Because Mommy loves it.

Sometimes you mistakenly call me Mommy, occasionally you call me by my first name, but mostly you call me Stepmommy. I’ve been here since before you could talk. I helped potty train you. I helped teach you your numbers and letters. I’m teaching you to read. I’m teaching you to count. I taught you how to say please, thank you, you’re welcome, and excuse me. I taught you how to climb. I’m teaching you how to walk confidently, to speak your mind, and to respect yourself. But I’m not really Mommy. You’ve informed me of this. I’m “Just Stepmommy.”

I don’t fault you for that. How could I? I know in my heart that there’s no way you’d know the difference if someone hadn’t told you. I’m the one that’s loved your Daddy since you can remember. I’m the one who’s kissed the booboos and sang the lullabies and served the breakfasts lunches and dinners and dispensed the medicine and tucked in the sheets and cleaned up the sick and answered the questions since before you could speak. I’ve been here more than half your life. Why would I be “Just Stepmommy”? Why is there a hierarchy of matriarchy in your young mind? It’s not because you don’t love me. It’s not because you don’t like me. The shine in your eyes and the squeal in your voice when you see me in the mornings or greet me after work belie that theory. Someone told it to you, and that’s not your fault.

But I know you love me. And hopefully, you know I love you. What I see when I look at you is a stranger, but a stranger that I would do anything to protect and to nurture. You are my sunshine and my days are all clouds when you and your brother are not home. But you are both strangers. I hold your hand, and feel beyond fortunate that these little, tiny, perfectly formed fingers nestle so snuggly in my palm. And for a moment, I am happy. And then, I wonder what those little fingers felt like the first day they felt another hand? How fragile you must have been in your first days here on earth! How you must have needed someone to hold you, to feed you, to clothe and bathe and protect you. You still need those things, but from a distance, because I’m teaching you to be your own little woman, to be self-reliant, to be “Strong and Super”, instead of “Cute and Pretty”. (You are cute and pretty. Cuter and prettier than any other little girl I’ve ever laid eyes upon.) And when I watch you while you sleep, so little, but legs and arms so long, you remind me of a foal, I watch as you turn in your sleep, and kick your long little legs just like your Daddy does in his sleep, and I wonder, did you kick before you were born? What would we be if we had ever shared that closeness?

Every time you recount a trip to the doctor, I listen intently, carefully, hanging on each word. And I ask myself, were you really sick, or were you craving attention? If you really were sick, did you ask for me when you felt so bad? Did you even want me? Did you even think of me? Or am I really “Just Stepmommy”? Just a passable stand-in while the real deal enjoys her free nights? But I listen, and I ask the right questions to move the story along. And I congratulate you on your bravery against all the shots and all the doctors in the world.

We talk at night, and you tell me stories about monsters and bears, and how your Daddy will always save you, and I smile, and I contribute, and I listen to every word. You tell me things I don’t understand, and things that sound like what they shouldn’t. I help you with the words you can’t remember, can’t pronounce, and together we tell awesome stories. I read to you, and I speak to you clearly, hoping that every sleepless night I’ve spent at the computer researching speech development and therapy was for something. I make new games each week to practice our letters and our sounds and our words. We’ve made it to two syllables, and some favorite three syllable words are only slightly butchered. Your speech is improved so much in the last year, and I am so very very proud of you. But I wonder, if I had been along for the all along, would you have been so far behind at nearly 3? You’re almost 4 now, and we’ve gone from grunts and points to nonsense stories and only a quarter of the words are made up. I hope I’m doing well. I hope you’re learning and growing. I hope you’ll be smart.

I take you out, to the library, to see my grandmother, we take walks around the neighborhood, and when you speak to strangers, I translate. I rephrase. I correct. I make sure that you heard every word the way it normally sounds so hopefully eventually you pick it up in the ways that my coaching fails you. And I wonder, is there something more I could do?

You go into dazes, you refuse to look me in the eyes, even when you’re telling me a story. All I want in this world at those moments is for you to make eye contact, to stop looking at the floor, to stop looking at the wall, to stop averting your gaze, and for a while I wondered, do you only do it to me? But I’ve watched. It’s always. And then I wonder, if I had the right to take you to a doctor, would they confirm my worst nightmares? But I remember, I do not have that right. All I can do is hope and coach and try to teach and all I can do is expose you to the elements and hope you come away from it with something meaningful. Those are my only rights because I am “Just Stepmommy.”

You tell me that you love your Mommy, that you miss her, that you’re waiting for her to come home. And every week, when she fails to do that for long enough for you to forget, you cry when she takes you away from us. Away from me. I don’t tell you this, but I cry, too. When you and your brother are gone with your Real Mommies, I lie in my bed and I cry for you. Because I miss you. I’m in love with you little monsters, you little animals, you little angels. I love you so much that my heart breaks for you every week when you are, figuratively, ripped away from my side. I’ve grown so attached to you two in the last year, that sometimes I wonder if it’s not superficial. If it’s not too early to acknowledge it. But you two are a part of me that burns with excitement and pride when I watch you be yourselves, and burns with searing pain when I realize that there is no little girl or boy to share my meals, or prattle on about something I do not understand.

Sometimes I think about having my own children, I fantasize about sleepless nights that are all my own, that I don’t share with someone else. I dream about the logistics of daily care and the burden of diapers and feeding and carrying and teaching. I long for the opportunity to satiate that desire to be someone’s one and only. And I hate myself for wanting it. And sometimes, in the deepest darkest most guilty parts of my heart, I resent you for that. Your love put that desire in me where it never was before. Your smile drew me into a form of love that I never knew. Your absence showed me the hole that never was supposed to be uncovered in my heart. And your youth and need and chokehold on your father’s heart prevents me from having any real hope that I will ever be whole. You break me, and every week, as soon as I learn to love my lot in life, as soon as I accept that I am and always will be “Just Stepmommy”, you’re taken away from me again, and then I’m just nothing. Just alone in a house that needs cleaned again with no little monsters to mess it up for days. Alone in a home with quiet walls and doors and empty rooms. Alone in a place littered with toys and no one to play with them.

And then I wonder, how much must your Real Mommy hurt when you’re with me? This woman who stepped into your life with no explanation, no excuse, and, almost instantly, won your adoration and affection, your smiles and your kisses, your giggles and your shrieks, your accidental “Mommy” words? How could she ever forgive me for filling a role she was supposed to be the only one to fill? If I were in her shoes, I would hate the Stepmommy for that. And I would try to be nice, and I would try to listen to the stories, and I would try to accept the fact that, through nobody’s fault, things are just how they are. But I can understand why maybe, just this once, she slipped up and said to her little princess with a mind like a sponge, who is learning to speak and address people and understand the complex world and relationships around her, that I am “Just Stepmommy”. And, while it breaks my heart, I can understand it.

My dearest, darling daughter, I hope you never have to read this letter, I hope that everything is always as good as it is now or better. But if you do, what I want you to know is this: To you, I may be “Just Stepmommy”, but to me, you are not “Just my Stepdaughter”, you are my Daughter yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forever after that.

Love, Stepmommy

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An anonymous post written by a beautiful lady.  Thank you for selecting me to share it with the world!

 

Today's Random Thoughts

Today's random thoughts are brought to you by my neuroses, my 4yo, and Facebook comments.
  So  those of you who are just joining us for the first time, welcome!  To catch you all up, I hate spiders.  I am a stay at home mom to the most adorable 4yo, and I have a broken leg at present.
  So my Daddy decided upon returning from our recent trip to Tennessee, that he would stay with us a week to help me out.  The heating element in our dryer was broken, and we were waiting on the new dryer to be delivered later in the week, when it started.  I was one leg balancing, cleaning the bathroom sink, before the strange dryer delivery men had to see my bathroom where the dryer is located.  I was cleaning, and I realized I was not even going to attempt to clean the empty tub.  It has not been used for months due to poor shower pressure, and the new removable shower head in our other full bathroom. Can I digress and just give well deserved props to the inventor of the removable shower head.  Genius right there!  Love! Okay, so back to the shower.  My husband had killed several itsy bitsy spiders in the empty tub.  He just thinks it is enough to smoosh them. He rarely cleans up the carcasses.  So every time I hobble hop into our bathroom(this one is the most crutch friendly), I stare at the dead half carcass and squooshed separated legs of one of my dear old hubs kills. Gross.  So as I lean over the tub to pull the curtain across the length of the tub, I have to look.  I have to peer into the tub, scanning for that ginormous spider that I just know is there.  There have been many giants found in this tub before.  This time, there are two small spiders that have made webs in the bottom corners of the tub that I cannot reach while balancing on one foot.  Okay, life as we know it is not threatened by these two tiny little guys.(BTW, this is definite progress on my part!)  I will have hub kill them when he gets home.
   Every night since that day, when in the dark of the night, I have to go to the bathroom, I hop in fear into the barely lit bathroom on my crutches.  I hop in, turn around, balance, balance my crutches on the wall one at a time, precariously pull down my britches, grab the sink corner, and while still elevating one leg, lower myself onto the toilet.  Then the familiar dread creeps in. I wonder if I pull back the curtain, if there will be a bigolhugeospiderthatwilleat myfaceoffandjumponme spider in that tub again? Most nights I just hurry up and do my business and get the heck out of there.  So every couple of days I feel compelled to pull back the curtain and confront my fears.  I am happy to report that after today's inspection that we are still ginormo-spider free for now! Yay! But I can tell you everywhere in my house that there is a spider.  There is one down the hall, in the corner of the hallway ceiling, across from my daughter's bedroom.  It moved in last night.  There is one, possibly two, that took up residence in the far corner of my bedroom at the beginning of the week.  There are still the two longtime residents in the bathroom tub, and there is the kitchen spider.  He is a slippery little sucker.  I decided to face my fears and let him co-habitate for a small block of time.  I wiped his webs down, when they moved past the corner of the kitchen window.  So he decided to move higher, to the top half of the window, where I cannot reach.  It is like he is laughing at me.  I can hear his tiny little spider voice saying, "Haha lady!  I know your temporarily crippled and too short to get me anyway! Go ahead,try and reach me! I wanna see you knock down my webs now! Nah nah nah, nah nah nah!" So anyway, he is still there, for now, because I cannot reach him.  There are also three outside web spinners.  Two are on and their webs are across my front living room windows.  They only come out at night.  I think they are vampire spiders, because I never see them in the day.  Not pretty and sparkly like Edward, but only come out at night like really big and bad vampires.  Then there is the third one.  I have been battling him since June.  He moved in while we went to the beach.  He first camped out on the back doors.  He spun big, huge web in the night.  He then hides during the day.   i have knocked down his porchwide webs numerous times with the broom, only to wake the next morning to a brand new web in the exact same place as the one I just swept away.  I found him one day earlier in the summer, when I went to turn my daughter's hose on for her sprinkler.  There he was big web under the porch.  Ugh.  I spreyed him and the web with spider killer many times as well.  Aint nothing killing this sucker.  So for now, he is under the porch during the day, and habitates the opposite corner of my porch at night.  Ah well, winter is coming soon! I do not get outside much these days anyway!
  Here is my second randomMy 4yo cracks me up. She is walking stand up comedy I tell you!  She has her own little brand of curse words.  Whenever she is suprised or ticked off, she will say,"Oh Coconuts! or Yeah Hay, no Way!" Thanks Jake and the Neverland Pirates at Disney for those!  Today I hear her exclaiming,"Oh friggle fraggle!" Too funny! She has also said ,"aww wobble!" Another favorite is "Aw, poop a duck!" As any mom will tell you, thay have their own language!
   My third random thought for the day is for my dear friend M.  She is currently going through the ex headache.  Yes, almost half of all of us wives out there, have had to deal with at least one if not more ex wives.  She is now first hand experiencing the aggravation.  If you have a husband or boyfriend that shares a child or children with another woman, then you know the headache I speak of.  The one that we never talk about, because that would make us the 'bitchy' ones.  The best way I have found from personal experience, is to be the better, and bigger person.  Kill 'em with kindness.  I know this entails biting you tongue harder than you ever though possible, drilling your freshly manicured fingernails into bloody half moons in your palms in order to hold your tongue and smile, or taking a deep breath and counting to at least 10,000.  It envolves the patience of a saint, and believe me, by the end of the next up to 18 years, you will have earned that title.  It involves watching broken promises eat away at your kids, having the kids exposed to things that kids should never be exposed to, it envolves putting the kids in the middle, and lots of tears from big and little broken hearts.  Your heart will break for them a thousand times, and there is not a thing you can do but hold them and rock them to sleep. It envolves watching the birth mother hurt YOUR child time and time again, while you are raising and loving them.  It entails watching the birth mothers intentionally hurting their child, to hurt your spouse and to make the child hate or think less of you.  Your heart will break for your spouse and or signifigant other, as the other ex half tries to keep the children from you, because they do not like you.  You will see the ex's trying to still control their former husbands and boyfriends in a myriad of ways.  They will try to rip his heart out, ie through his kids.  The hardest thing to do, is to stand by his side and hold him as he cries, yells, or plots their death(just kidding on that last one!)  All you can do is be there for the kids, as their safe haven, their shelter from the storm(ie their mother), and love them unconditionally.  Your heart will break as your shared kids see the truth about their biological parent(if they were unlucky enough to get a bad one). You will wish you could smack some sense into a woman who calls herself mother, that only spends time with her child, when she wants to play mommy, or needs a babysitter for her current brood, not a real relationship with her firstborn.  You shake your head at horrific stories that your other half's family tell you, of things that she did to hurt the kids. You are the one who has to deal with the counseling, the acting out in school, and the terror stricken habits the kids developed because of nightmare exes.  You are the fall out girl.  Ms Make Everything Okay.  And you are glad to be, because you are full of love not hatred. You will pray to God to answer the question for you,of how could a mother treat her children this way.  You will also have to deal with late night or always during your family dinner kid time calls from intoxicated ex-spouses begging to know why, oh why didn't we work out, and the patience it requires to deal with it, so sthe ex dosen't yank visitation from your significant other? What was wrong with me and or our relationship, and what does she have that I didn't.  You will find that eventually as they grow older, that the what seems like the exes hold on your life loosens and goes away.(How boring their lives must be now that they cannot mess with you and yours, and now that they have alienated their kids!!!) But then you have the emails from the exes, asking marital advice in their current disfunctional marriage.  Trying to get to know your man again on the sly.  Stating that it scares them, that they might still have feelings for him, and they miss his family.  You will find yourself still getting posessive, and wanting to go at it, but your better than that.  As a grown up, you have all the exes secrets!  So instead of being all like,"Bitch, you wanna piece o me? Now it's like,"Bitch please, I been around for almost 14 years, and I know ALL your secrets.  Ones that even your kids don't know, so back off bitch and leave me and mine alone! Boom!"  You don't even have to say it aloud, just the knowledge of the power you hold is satisfaction enough!  You are the nice one, the kind one, the one who listens to everybody else bitch, but never says a word.  Knowledge is satisfaction enough! Plus I don't think the current hubbie would like the fact that you were trying to creep on your ex, ya know?  So when the child and her father are having a FB comment dialog, ex, please do not comment.  There is plenty I could throw out there here and now, but I have edited and am keeping it clean. Stay out of it, it's none of your business.  These are kinds of things that will happen to you.  These are all real situations that have happened to real people I know.  I have always said, don't ever talk bad about the other motha's, the kids will one day see for theirselves!   Every girl who has the potential to be soon dating someone with kids needs to read this.   I luvya Miss M! You have a heart of gold!  Hang in there, because it takes special people to be step mothers, and you are one special person!  ***EDITED with adult children in mind***  Random thought #3 was not intended to offend or hurt anyone, I was simply stating facts and my observations.  If you have taken offense to this post, it was not my intent to upset anyone.