When I found myself a single mom at 40 with two young daughters, (ages 6 and 9) after 12 years of marriage, to what turned out to be a gay guy, I have to confess that I found myself in a state of total dating anxiety. I hadn’t dated in 15 years and quite frankly I wasn’t sure I remembered how. I was insecure for sure and worried that men would no longer consider me attractive.  I had been a wall flower in high school and then went on to a college where the ratio of men to women was one to eight. And then there was the marriage to the gay guy, so you can see that not only were my dating skills rusty, they had sucked to begin with. Read the rest of this post on Momversation.

I kept hoping this year’s Christmas would go off without a hitch. I really thought that we had finally worked out all the kinks. But no. There always seems to be something or someone who screws up the works.

As you might expect, blended family holidays, particularly Christmas, can be fraught with thwarted expectations and nostalgic remembrances of how things used to be when mom and dad were still married. Every family has its own traditions and blending them and finding a common ground is the hardest to do this time of year.

When I was a single mom my two girls always spent Christmas eve and woke up Christmas morning at my house. My ex would come over in time to watch them open their presents and we would all have breakfast and play with the new toys. There was no stress or drama and everyone was happy.

Things were a little different for Paul. When he was a single dad his kids spent Christmas eve at their mom’s and woke up Christmas morning at her house and he stayed at home alone. He didn’t get invited to go over to her house and he did not get to share in the joy of Christmas morning with his children. They would come to his house later in the afternoon, but it just wasn’t the same. Two years ago Paul decided he wanted this to change and told his ex he wanted his turn having the kids wake up Christmas morning with him. She was not happy about it, but went along with it when they decided they would alternate the holiday every year. I, in turn, made the same arrangement with my ex giving him his turn to have the kids on Christmas morning. (Are you keeping up? I know, it’s exhausting keeping track.)

This year was supposed to be our turn to have the kids wake up here on Christmas morning, but apparently Paul’s ex “forgot” and went ahead and make plans (without consulting us)  to go out of town on Christmas day with her boyfriend so she has to have the kids on Christmas eve and Christmas morning. She promised that next year we could have the kids. We went along with her request seein’s how she was going to bring the kids over at 10am on Christmas morning anyway, but here’s the wrinkle. My kids are still waking up here with us and when they get up they want to go to the tree and open their presents right away. They don’t want to have to wait until 10am when Paul’s kids come over, which is what Cheryl is insisting that we do. She accused Sophia of being rude for not waiting for them to come over so they can open presents as a family. While I appreciate Cheryl’s logic, I don’t think she is looking at the big picture. When she wakes up at her mom’s is she going to have to wait to open her presents? No. She was very insistent and would not listen to reason. This made all three girls cry. Sophia resented being called rude as well as the demands dictating how she spend her Christmas morning. Eva, who is very self-sacrificing and is  willing to wait until Paul’s kids came over, was upset that there was a conflict and said, “Why does everything have to be so hard?”  My sentiments exactly. Why does it have to be so hard? I’m weary. I’m weary of having to constantly negotiate, mediate and compromise. Dealing with the kids is one thing, but having to also accomodate  the demands of the ex-spouse is  frustrating and exhausting.

I tried to smooth things over the best I could and promised my girls I would talk to Paul when he came home to explain the situation so he could reason with Cheryl. I also suggested a compromise, “How about you open just a few presents” but neither side would budge. When I told Paul the whole story he backed me up and said he would talk to Cheryl.  (He hasn’t had a chance to do this yet because the kids went to their other parents’ on Friday.) Knowing this made my girls feel better. Still, I am dreading another confrontation. It makes me very sad.  I hope we can get past this and still enjoy our Christmas.

In the meantime, I did try to get Sophia to put things in perspective. Waiting to have to open your presents is better than not having presents to open. And Cheryl’s demands that she wait are borne of her own need to feel included and to not be left out.  After all, we are a family and families open their presents together. A conundrum that will take the wisdom of Solomon to solve. If you readers have any suggestions, thoughts or comments  I would love to hear them.

If you moms and stepmoms are looking for a great holiday gift for all the dads and stepdads in your life, I highly recommend a wonderfully hilarious and warm hearted book I just finished reading: The 40-Year-Old Version: Humoirs of a Divorced Dad by Joel Schwartzberg. It it a series of essays that are essentially slices of the life of a divorced dad with three children. When Joel asked me to review the book I was eager to see the subject of divorce and single parenting through  a man’s perspective and I was surprised that in many instances it was not that different from my own. Like Joel, I too worried that I had the “divorced” label tattooed to my head when I dropped off and picked up my kids from school alone. And then there’s  the dreaded back-to-school night.  I could really identify with his experiences and I found myself routing for him as he rebuilt his life, forged stronger bonds with his three children, established new family traditions and eventually found  love again with his second wife, Anne. Joel’s self-deprecating and insightful humor reminded me a lot of another of my favorite “dad” authors, Dave Barry, which only goes to show you that being divorced doesn’t stop you from being a great parent. Kudos to Joel Schwartzberg for not only penning a delightful book, but for being a terrific dad as well. To read more about Joel click here.

Mark and Sophia are both driving now and have cars at their disposal. As I’ve mentioned before, this is not only liberating to them, but to us their parents because we no longer have to chauffeur them around and they can drive their siblings around as well. The other component to this whole new teen driving development is that it decreases our (mine and Paul’s) interaction with our ex-spouses. This level of independence for the kids means less contact for us with “the other parent”. The kids can still see all their parents as much as they want now that they have wheels, but we see less of the exes because they are not coming over for drop offs and pick ups.  There’s no more cell phone calls from the driving way as in , “I’m here now get out here.” Whether you have a reasonably friendly relationship with your former spouse, or a less than civil  contentious or acrimonious one with your previous partner, this new freedom can be a godsend. It means you are moving forward and leaving behind your  previously married life. What a relief.

The other benefit is the kids can see their other parents more. Even though we have set custody arrangements, mine and Jared (my ex) have about a 70/30 split and Paul and Susie are about 50/50, we have always had an open door policy. We were all flexible. If a parent was  traveling  on business or holiday or just wanted extra time with the kids no one objected or complained. But… we had to make arrangements for transportation. Now we don’t have to. For instance, two weekends ago I asked my girls to come over to help me with a project while they were spending the weekend with their dad. They stopped by for a few hours (after a trip to Starbucks) and then went back to their dad’s. This weekend is the Lighted Boat Parade in Santa Cruz and even though it is mine and Paul’s  kid free weekend, our teen drivers will be bringing their siblings by if they want to come with us. Now everyone has the best of both worlds.

These past few days Eva has had her friends over for various activities. There was the soccer party on Saturday and then on Sunday I taught a craft class in my art studio for a bunch of Eva’s friends. On both occasions I got to eavesdrop on the girls’ conversations as if I were a fly on the wall and they had forgotten that I was there. I learned all about the girls who dress like sluts, how much they like/hate school. How much they like/hate boys. And how much they like/hate just about everything else. And of course, they all love Zak Efron and some other music CD that Eva says she will love for all of eternity. (I can’t remember that one.)

Most of this talk I kind of tune out as adolescent chatter and let go in one ear and out  the other. ( I do, however, draw the line when I hear mean things said about other girls. I don’t care  how slutty they dress.) My ears perked up though when I heard Eva’s friends gushing over how much they liked our house. “You’re sooo lucky. You’ve got such a cool room. I wish I had a trampoline. Wow, what a cool art studio!”  Eva’s friends oohed and awed as they walked through the house.

And it’s true. Thanks to my handy engineer do-it-yourself husband with his passion for renovation, we do have an awesome house. There’s a gigantic great room with a large wall for projecting movies. An outdoor fireplace, a carport/game room complete with ping pong table and pool table, a hot tub, a trampoline and a separate art/craft studio (with radiant floor heating) that my husband built for me when we got married. Do my kids appreciate any of this? Not to my knowledge.

You see, I had to drag them kicking and screaming into this house. They. Did. Not. Want. To. Move. Period. The divorce was no where near as upsetting as the trauma of the remarriage and subsequent move. They missed their old house. We were a family there. Their dad had built them a play house in the back yard and they had chosen the colors for their rooms. They mourned the loss of what used to be and romanticized something that was never really that great. Mommy and Daddy weren’t very happy there. The standing water under the house made it moldy, the pastel pink that looked great on the paint chips looked like Pepto- Bismol on the walls,  and they never actually played in the play house because it was too hot and too small. Can I tell them that? Nope.

I think, I hope, that Eva got a different perspective when she heard how much her friends envied her. Sometimes that’s all it takes, a different point of view to make you realize just how lucky you are.

As a followup to my most recent post, One or none, I wanted to share with you an article I wrote for the Examiner titled Blended family discipline.

Want to be on Dr. Phil with AND improve your relationship with the mom or stepmom in your life?

Jennifer Newcombe Marine and Carol Marine, the mom and stepmom duo who wrote No One’s the Bitch have the opportunity to be on Dr. Phil and they are looking for a mom and stepmom  who can’t stand each other, but who are willing to be on the show next week, Tuesday, Nov. 3rd. For more information click on their website No One’s the Bitch or email Jennifer at marine2marine@gmail.com.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta Earthquake that decimated the South Bay area, including downtown Santa Cruz, where we now live. When most people think  of the quake they don’t realize that the epicenter was in Santa Cruz and not in San Francisco, where most of the media attention was drawn. I read the coverage in the Santa Cruz Sentinel this morning and it was very moving. Reading stories about people who died, people who risked their own lives saving others and the general sense of the community rallying around each other, brought tears to my eyes.

We were not living in Santa Cruz then. Jared, my ex and I had just moved into our apartment in Bayonne, NJ. Our wedding was in a week and a half. We would have been married 20 years this month. Oddly, I always associate the Loma Prieta Earthquake with the year we got married. We had just finished unpacking some boxes when we sat down to a late dinner to watch the San Francisco Giants in the World Series. And then  there was a commotion. The camera started shaking and people were screaming and then the TV screen went black. Local newscasters came on to say that there had been an earthquake.

We had no idea that in three years we would move to the very town that was the epicenter of the quake.  Although we never experienced the quake first hand, we heard lots of stories. Some of which were actually kind of funny, in an ironic sort of way. One friend of mine, a videographer for a local company, had just organized and categorized his collection of videos. It had taken him weeks to complete the task. He had just finished and proudly announced his accomplishment to his co-workers when the walls started shaking and everything came crashing down, videos strewn all over the room. Now that’s funny. And then there were the fateful stories of chance and good fortune.  Like the friend who told me she left work early that day and had she not, she most likely would have been killed because the desk where she sat had been crushed by a chandelier from the ceiling above.

Everyone has a story. Mine is that I was watching the Giant’s game on TV in New Jersey with my then fiance.  Which brings me to the point I am leading up to here which is — this month marks the 20th anniversary of The Loma Prieta quake. It also means that if Jared and I were still married we would be celebrating our 20th anniversary. It would have been a milestone for sure and I wonder how many milestones Paul and I will reach. We’ll probably make it to 20 years together barring any unforseen tragedy or illness. We’re young enough. But will we make it 30? 40? And unless we live to our 90’s, we will not see our golden anniversary, like my parents who were married 53 years. That’s a hard point for me to reconcile sometimes. Paul and I don’t have much of a past together, but we hope for a long future together. But knowing what we both know about the twists and turns life can take us, nothing is certain or forever. Like the stories I read in the paper this morning from people who recalled this day 20 years ago when they were sitting in a coffee shop and 15 seconds later, it was gone. A pile of rubble. Many things in life are temporary, so live in the moment and enjoy life while you can.

I caught Paul’s cold and I’m miserable. Last night my tonsils felt like they were bursting out of my throat. Some people actually welcome the opportunity to stay in bed with a box of tissues watching I Love Lucy reruns (which is what I did as a kid and what I did last night), but I don’t. As an adult with kids I dreaded getting sick because I always had to take care of the kids by myself. My family was on the opposite coast and my first husband was a work-a-holic who was never home. I can remember having swollen glands and a temperature of 103 with an infant and a toddler and still he would work until 11PM. It was awful.

That was then. This is now, and Paul is sooooo much different. When I’m sick, not only does he act and look concerned, he actually takes care of me.  He cooks dinner. He makes me tea and he will go to the store and buy me soup if I asked him to. What a guy. What a difference. I shouldn’t bash my ex because he was going through his own sexual identity turmoil, but I didn’t know that a the time.

I feel much better today not only because I am tanked up on Sudafed and Tylenol, but because my hubby is in town and I have the comfort of knowing that  when he gets home tonight he will make dinner, clean up the kitchen  and bring me tea.

These articles on Divorce are by Vanessa Van Petten, youthologist and teen author of the parenting book “You’re Grounded!” She manages RadicalParenting.com, a parenting blog written by 60 teen writers, ages 12-20 to help parents and adults get a honest and open view into the world and mind of youth. Van Petten’s articles on her parent’s divorce have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Teen Vogue, CNN, Fox News, CBS Miami and much more!
http://www.RadicalParenting.com

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