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It's Not the Great Pumpkin Stepmom, It's the Ex
By Dawn Miller.
This past weekend my husband and I loaded up the gang and roared off into the countryside to experience that grand family fall tradition – pumpkin-picking.
My stepdaughter and stepson are now in their teens – but they still love pumpkin-picking – in all its hokey farm-fun glory. We had a grand time singing along on the farm hayride, trotting thru the corn maze, and picking apples to take home for pies and jelly. We even tried out the kiddy corn maze for fun. And still got lost.
As we merrily tripped over pumpkin vines in a picked-over patch – the kids were all business – doggedly hunting those rare prizes – perfectly shaped pumpkins. Finding one is truly an art – finding $40 worth for their mom – is work.
You see - that’s when my perfect afternoon hit a snag. My husband’s ex-wife had given the kids money to buy pumpkins for her fall decorating. In their zeal, the kids hit the mother lode of pumpkins – and now they were short $20 bucks to cover her pumpkins. My husband good-naturedly forked over $20 to cover his ex-wife’s pumpkins without a thought.
I trotted into the country store to inspect preserves while they were checking out and muse. My initial thought was – what?! First your ex-wife muscles into our family activity by giving the kids money to buy a lot of pumpkins (likely the same money we just gave her the day before for child support). But now we have to pay for her pumpkins too? And haul them home for her in my tiny compact car?
I was mortified – and thankfully – I was silent. And alone for a few minutes to figure out my strategy. Because if you’re a stepmom – you know you have to have a strategy to handle an incursion like this.
And I knew that I had a choice to make. I could be the big bad stepmom who whines and makes a fuss – or I could be the bigger person – roll with the punch and not say a word.
I’ve figured out one thing in three years on the job as a stepmom – my husband’s ex-wife has boundary confusion issues. Plain and simple – the woman is without a clue as to what is appropriate for an ex-wife to do. At my mother-in-law’s funeral, she muscled her way into a family pew even though my husband had asked her to respect decorum and his mother’s wishes for her to be in the friends section. When I opted not to invite her to Thanksgiving dinner last year at my house with my husband’s family – she made sure we got paid back by maneuvering to haul the kids across the country for another holiday. She is to be pitied. Not envied. Not paid back. Not one-upped. Simply felt sorry for. In my anger once or twice, I have even privately called her pathetic.
And so I very smartly kept my mouth shut. Because of the kids – because of my husband – because I value the relationship I have with them. We had such a fun time singing "itsy bitsy spider" on the hay ride and being together all afternoon that I didn’t want to ruin it with an outburst over a bunch of silly pumpkins.
I could certainly think of other times when I had ruined the moment – that impulsive declarative road was always so familiar and tempting to me – and so rutted with potholes. And I felt more than a little pathetic to be upset about a bunch of pumpkins. It was positively silly of me to allow such a paltry incursion from a woman my husband loathes to threaten me. Getting upset at that moment would give her control – and rob me of my joy and my family of theirs.
At the end of the day – my relationship with my stepchildren is a heckuva lot more valuable than my trunk space. So my lips stayed zipped. Of course, the apple cider had to ride up front with me as the trunk was positively crammed with pumpkins. And I fussed arranging things so I could at least tell whose pumpkins were whose.
And we sang off-key on the way home and pulled into the drive-thru for a pit stop. All in all – not a bad way for a family to spend Sunday afternoon. And for a stepmom to face her demons.
Copyright © Dawn Miller. Dawn writes a bi-weekly column on life in blended families at TheStepfamilyLife.com. Website links about stepfamilies, a free e-newsletter and bookstore are available. Readers are welcome to email her. Reprinted with permission.
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