It was finally Saturday, and all I wanted to do was be alone. I envisioned a rejuvenating afternoon at an independent bookstore, the paper next to me on a tiny table top. But I knew that my husband would feel like I was running away from spending time with his two daughters. In the end, we decided that the girls, 15- and 16-years-old, could join me at a big-name bookstore while my husband went grocery shopping. When we arrived, I found a book, politely let both of them know where I could be found, and retreated.
Easy enough, right? Not quite.
My husband and I have been married for less than a year, and his two teenagers are from his first marriage. Just lately, we eased into the idea of me taking an active role in parenting—reminding the girls to pick up after themselves, shopping for school clothes, explaining social etiquette. Things have come a long way since that day in our kitchen when his youngest told me she would “never talk to me—ever.” The girls recently began introducing me to their friends as their stepmom and started responding (most of the time) to my household requests. Still, it’s safe to say that we’re finding our sea legs.
Back at the bookstore, the girls approached me after twenty minutes, bearing a stack of books.
“Soooo,” they said, with that long intonation that means someone’s about to ask you for something that you might not give. “I want to get these two books, and she wants to get that book, but we also want to get these two other books to share,” said the elder.
I stood there in front of them, frozen with indecision. Most of their selections were James Joyce novels—how could I refuse them such literature? To a mother, a birth mother, the work of responding to a request like this is probably as easy as buttering hot toast. To me, the situation was dire.
Since the beginning, I’d vacillated on how much I wanted to parent, partly because my husband had told me at first that I didn’t need to get super involved. I think he envisioned me on the sidelines, not wanting to scare me away, lovingly in the girls’ lives without being an authority. But I soon found there was no hokey pokey half-in, half-out about it. Dealing with teenagers is inevitably a full-on experience—and one that is sometimes scary as hell.
I took a breath. “Well…you could pool your money,” I finally said, referring to the teen checking accounts that we opened a few months ago, in hopes of fostering the girls’ independence and teaching them the value of money.
They locked eyes. They weren’t expecting this reaction; they had clearly planned on me giving in to their request. The older one looked sternly at her sister. “Let’s talk.” They promptly walked into a corner of the store.
I stood shaking. You’d think I was about to be thrown into the ring with a two-time world champion boxer.
As I waited, my mind went back to where I’d been just an hour earlier. At the end of my OB/GYN check-up, my doctor had asked me if I had any questions. I told her that I’d been feeling high-strung, which sometimes made it hard for me to “get in the mood.” She assured me that it was normal, then recommended I schedule times to have sex with my husband. “Like, sex dates?” I asked. It sounded fairly pathetic—but frankly, it also seemed kind of smart.
My phone buzzed, and I snapped back to the present. My husband had arrived to pick us up. I walked over to where the girls were sitting, slouching and probably brewing a new scheme. “Your dad’s here,” I said.
Finally, they spoke. “We’re just going to get these three,” they said. “But, neither of us have enough in one bank account to afford two. Can you help us move our money around?”
Not spitefully. Not like horrible gremlins.
Holy Mother Mary of God. I just won, I thought to myself. Or, I just taught them the value of money. Or…maybe those two are the same thing?
When we got home, I told my husband the whole story. “You did the right thing,” he said.
“Glad you agree. By the way, I’d like to make a date with you for Wednesday night.”
Jamie Yuenger is a stepmother of three daughters and owner of StoryKeep, a Brooklyn-based production house that specializes in recording people’s life stories.
