I was a young and dumb and, at times, reckless stepmom.
When I met my stepson, he was two years old. Instantly, we got along, and I loved it when people mistook me for his “real” mom. I was terrified the first time I went to pick him up by myself, and his mom was furious. She slammed the door in my face.
I held homemade cupcakes up for him to blow out the candles on his third birthday. He smiled so big when I married his dad under a Christmas tree that year. I bought him too many clothes and did my best to show it off to his mom. I could be a good mama, too.
The summer he turned four, I took him to run through the big fountain downtown. We watched cartoons from the couch while his mom and dad argued outside about his schedule. I told him, “You just have people who love you so freaking much.”
He was about to turn five when I handed him his first sibling, a sister, for the first time. A few months later, I walked him into his Kindergarten classroom, shooting anxious glances at his mom who followed in behind me.
I got a fun job where he got to paint pottery the year he was six. I tried to befriend his mom that year. But in the back of my mind, I was always afraid she had a knife behind her back, so I kept one close, too.
We moved into a bigger house when he was about seven. After a big fight one night with his dad, he came in and hugged me while I was crying. That was also the year his dad took his mom back to court, but we should have left things alone.
He was almost eight when he was spun around, dizzy from the teacups at Disney. That year, I was the art mom in his class, which fueled the fire between his two homes. That was also the year he first called me “mom” on his own. That year, his mom married his stepdad, and I was glad that he is a great guy.
I gave him another sister before he turned nine. That was a hard year. But I loved watching him play baseball in the spring.
For his tenth birthday, I threw a huge party complete with water and Nerf gun wars. I told myself things would be better if I were better, so I did a lot of work on myself that year.
His mom brought him by when he was 11 to give me a remembrance necklace after I miscarried for a second time that year. We sat next to each other on the bleachers and watched his baseball games together that Spring. I could tell that he loved us getting along, and I genuinely enjoyed her company.
He was 12 when we celebrated my first and last Mother’s Day together. I moved out of the house that year, and he spent my birthday with me in my new apartment. He laughed at me over video chat when I told him how I had to kill my own spiders now and I was not pleased.
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I bought clothes for him over a FaceTime call when he was 13 because that boy outgrew everything, and Covid made shopping in person hard. I could tell he felt torn about talking to me, so I only called when he was with his mom. His mom would text me afterward and tell me it would blow over and that he still loved me.
By the time he was 14, I’d divorced his dad. I saw less of him and grieved not being a day-to-day parent to that sweet boy. His other siblings kept me busy, and we saw him as much as we could.
I worried a lot about balance and connection while he was 15, and a lot of my texts went unanswered. He was supposed to walk me down the aisle with my dad when I got remarried. But his family got Covid a few days before. So he and his mom watched over Facetime, and their smiles were so very bright.
I called him from the beach at Lake Tahoe on his 16th birthday so his siblings and I could sing him Happy Birthday. Later that year, I’d discuss with his mom what I could contribute to his first car. He got his first job, and his mom sent me a photo of him on his first day. I called to tell him how proud I was of him.
He turns 17 this summer. We discuss college, how much he likes his job, what he’s saving for, and the cute girl he’s texting. His mom and I talk weekly. We’ve come so far from the young girls trying to one-up each other as moms. We have become such a good team for our group of kids, the first of which made us both moms.
I once was a young, dumb, and reckless stepmom. But now I do better.
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