My World and Welcome to It

For those of you who are familiar with the show, the reference needs no explanation. (http://www.tvparty.com/) It is a sentimental favorite for my sister and me. It was a surreal combination of Walter Mitty and James Thurber. Cartoons co-mingled on screen with real characters and on screen sets. Often unexpectedly. It was brilliant.

This wedding fiasco has turned my life into an endless episode of My World and Welcome to It. If it were simply a script it would be considered comic genius for its oddly dark hilarity. But it involves my children.

Those of you who have placed your feet on the path to divorce handily understand the complicated nature of life after the papers have been signed. For those of you who have not been initiated into this particularly unpleasant rite of passage, I will attempt to explain some of the salient points.

The road to post-divorce-second-marriage-with-children-family-blending is one that is winding, riddled with potholes, booby-trapped, poorly lit and lacks sufficient signage. There is no GPS for this neighborhood. And the responsibility to navigate from one end to the other rests squarely on the parents' shoulders , and depends entirely on their understanding of their children's unique experiences and everyone's ability to cope.

J. and I have taken this endeavor very seriously. It has sometimes sucked the joy out of things but we have kept our focus. And I am proud to say that we've done it well. Not flawlessly; we've had our less graceful moments. But darn it we've tried. And have kept trying in spite of a few collectively skinned knees.

J. and I both have shared custody of our children with our former spouses. It is bizarre and unnatural and based on a Special Master's notion that children need both parents, even if, evidently, one of them is a dangerously unstable, beer-swilling paranoid.

We dated exclusively for nearly a year before meeting each other's children. We were careful not to intrude on each other's time with their kids. Then we sidestepped the first Christmas so as to not cause any additional stress to the first big holiday without both parents shuffling down the steps to see what Santa brought. (because really, who needs to be concerned about their manners in front of Dad's girlfriend when we are really in an uproar about all of this?)

When we were in the clear we introduced the kids to each other. In small, controlled doses. Bowling. Pizza. Trips to Dairy Queen. We fumbled through introductions to other people in our lives. We eventually came to share an occasional meal at each other's homes. We learned that this one doesn't like eggs and that one puts ketchup on everything. That this one can't sleep without a favorite lovey toy and that one is afraid of bugs of any kind.

J. and I gritted our teeth and smiled through sporting events, and Honor Society inductions, and banquets and concerts and religious milestones in the company of each other's exes, all so that the athlete/scholar/musician could look out at the audience and see all of the adults in his or her life peacefully coexisting and beaming with pride.

We planned and expertly executed family vacations, often with J. and I enjoying just a chaste kiss before padding down the hallways to separate bedrooms so no one had to fall asleep in a strange place thinking about THAT.

We have made the holidays work for them, even though it is more running around for us. We have helped our friends and other members of our extended families understand the house-of-cards nature of our situation, and have been accommodated in ways that would bring tears to your eyes. And it has paid off. Inch by inch, row by row, our children have come to see themselves as we do. As one family. We have purposefully avoided the use of the term "step."

And now, because we are not really, truly, on paper, officially, in the eyes of church and state, a real family, some 25 year old twit is trying to undo all that we've done?

Not on my watch, sister. Not on my watch.

http://tangandcigarettes.blogspot.com/

The Family Wedding

I have long had a theory: Nothing brings out your family weirdness like a wedding or a new baby. From the moment the bride-to-be accepts the ring, the Earth's axis shifts and until the "I dos" are whimpered in front of 300 of her closest family and friends, reality is altered and all that we have known to be true is warped.

I have had a sideline view to this phenomenon for (gasp!) the past 2 years.

J. and I have been together for 3 years...We have 4 kids between us - a high schooler and 3 tweens, and the complexities never stop. But this is not our story, however. Shortly after clearing the last hurdles of our respective divorces and falling madly in love, we received the squealing, high-pitched news that his twenty-something idiotic niece Em was engaged.

And there, friends, is where the Earth crashed into the sun. For two years now, at every BBQ/ birthday party/graduation/retirement party we have been forced to listen, smiling through the mind-numbing detail of all the menu choices, china patterns, ribbon selections, veil lengths, frosting textures, heel heights etc etc while the bride body-checks the host/birthday boy/graduate/retiree off the stage to regale us with another tale of her arduous search for all the taffeta money can buy in the perfect shade of raspberry sherbet. Always, sadly without the benefit of a glass of chardonnay.

I realize I am jaded. And not 22. And self-righteously disinterested. And have the benefit of a 3-digit IQ - but I sit in amazement looking at the rapt faces of at least 14 of the other 16 people at the BBQ/birthday party/graduation/retirement party table (J. and the boyfriend du jour of one of the other nieces excluded) wondering what could possibly STILL be interesting about this gig after all this time, when it was for most of us of marginal importance to begin with?

So, the wedding and all its requisite plans and details are annoying and dominate every moment of every event (a few of which, thanks to my divorce and ensuing custody concerns, I was exempt from attending) but eventually it would all come to its natural end without incident.

Or would it?

Flash forward to the summer before The Big Day - I am on my way out to meet a few girlfriends for our annual canoe trip (lots of gossip and beer and overturned canoes) when I pluck a fancy hand-addressed envelope out of my mailbox. It is addressed just to me. Curious, I open it to find an elaborate Save the Date card - raised script, extra doo-dads attached to the card (cha-ching!). It is for The Big Day. (Excuse me? Save the date? As if anyone could forget the date? Really? It's all we've talked about - listened about? - for the past year! I know it better than my own name!)

I look at the envelope again. I notice again: it is addressed just to me.

I am immediately suspicious that my children are not going to be invited to the wedding...and call J. to inquire about the address on his envelope. He has two girls - the high schooler and one of the tweens - both of whom are in the wedding (wearing raspberry sherbet dresses, natch). Being a man, he has efficiently tossed the envelope (evidence!) into the trash. He is however, uncommonly curious about my curiosity.

I explain that despite the fact that we have been in a committed relationship for over two years and have carefully and slowly introduced our children into eachother's families, and painstakingly inched toward blending the families into one, I suspect that MY kids, the ones he considers his as well, are not going to be invited to The Big Event when The Big Day is finally here.

He, again being a man, does not comprehend bride-speak and thinks I am getting myself worked into a lather for nothing. No way would his dim-witted sister let her vacuous, self-absorbed daughter do such a thing. I explain that there are only two reasons for a Save the Date (well, three if you count just wanting to have one more cutesy pink thing in your wedding scrap book) The first is if you are planning your wedding for some absurd date that people have to plan to be incovenienced for - like Christmas Eve. The other is simply a warning shot across the bow - That is to say "You are invited, and you are not."

So, in the absence of the discarded evidence - an invitation to J. and Family would clinch it - I quietly put on my Sherlock Holmes hat and lay in wait for some clue as to what was truly afoot.

http://tangandcigarettes.blogspot.com/