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.

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