But what I can always share and celebrate and revel in is their love for me and mine for them.

This is my comfort today. Despite the many things I cannot change,  no amount of eye-rolling or lies can change the fact that I enjoy a close, loving relationship with my husband’s children.  They are treasures in my life. I treasure the mundane and special moments we share, our talks, silly texts, and inside jokes.  I have never, ever, ever wanted to take their mother’s place.  Instead, the children have created a space for me in their lives and in their hearts, and for that I’m grateful.  Children have a boundless amount of love to give and they can never have too many people in their lives who love and care for them.

All children are gifts. Just showing up in a child’s life doesn’t entitle you to anything.  Giving birth doesn’t either.  How we love children teaches them how to love others.   How we treat children teaches them what they can and should expect from others.  A child’s love is a humbling thing. All we can do as adults is try and be worthy and embrace the gift when children open their hearts to us.

I’m grateful for the four girls who freely choose to open their hearts to me.  I believe my children love me for the same reason my bonus children do: Not because I’m their mother and they’re obligated to love me, but rather because they choose to love me.  Being a mother doesn’t entitle me to anything that I don’t prove worthy of by my actions and commitment.  And obligatory love is no love at all.   No one is owed a child’s love. Even, or perhaps especially, biological parents shouldn’t take this gift for granted.  None of us have that kind of time.

We have a saying in our  family, one that TechBooHusband and I share with each other, and that we’ve passed along to the kids: “I don’t always like you, but I always love you.”  I was texting with my bonus daughters today and one of them wrote, “Okay…stepparent who loves and likes me .”  She understands that love is a choice, that we’ve chosen to open our hearts to each other, and that this is a special thing.  And with that reminder, I had to get out of my earlier funk: I am blessed.

As usual, time with FedBooHusband leaves me feeling some kind of way. Several kinds of ways actually. Wistful, always wishing we had more time. But then resolute that things are they way they have to be because of the commitment we both happily make as parents.  And then wistful again because our time together is like oxygen, fuel.  Our time, his love…they move me forward.

I was talking with a friend recently and she was lamenting something in her marriage that I knew all-too-well in my first marriage: That running on empty feeling, and the inevitable crash and burn that comes with it.  It feels good now to be full.  FBH is fond of saying, “We’re not perfect. But we’re perfect for each other.”  And he’s right, because whatever challenges we face, we face them together, and he keeps my tank full which is exactly what I need.

FBH and I have a standing joke; we say:  “You know, I love you today and I like you.”  So…I’m feeling really, really in love this morning, and really in like too.  When I feel things strongly, sometimes I struggle to find the words to express it.  Or rather, the words that do come to mind feel inadequate, so I look for others’ words, to capture what I’m feeling.  To affirm and, in this case, celebrate it.  On love, Anaïs Nin is my go-to woman:

“Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.”

“Anxiety is love’s greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.”

“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”

“The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.”

This morning, these words are my meditations, my prayers of thanksgiving.  I’m ready to start my day.

Last night, after a Thanksgiving brunch that left FedBooHusband and me feeling like we could never eat again, we got a call from some friends, a couple FBH has known for years.  They invited us to come over and “Come hungry!”  The idea of any more food made us weak, but we enjoy hanging out with this couple, so we went.  I am especially thankful for their invitations because even though they were friends with FBH and his ex-wife, they have always been warm and welcoming toward me.

After catching up with K, the woman half of the couple, on her pregnancy (she’s due next month), the conversation turned to someone we both know who has been spiraling down over the last few years.  “What happened to her?” K asked, somewhat rhetorically.  While there are many issues at play, this person’s divorce seems to have been the beginning of the downward spiral in which  she’s made a series of ill-advised choices, including another problematic marriage, and her children are suffering.  K, who has never been divorced, asked me what made the difference for me, how was I able to pick myself up after divorce.  I told her that while I’d certainly had my less-than-stellar, “What the hell was I thinking?” moments in the fallout, two things I can say for sure: I never put my children in jeopardy or neglected them, and eventually, I bounced back.

But “bouncing back” makes it sound like it was easy.  It wasn’t. But I’m fairly certain my behavior didn’t have people wondering, “What happened to her?”  The difference, I believe, is being honest about the divorce.  Divorce hurt.  It was embarrassing.  And because my kids were impacted, it was frightening. I worried what divorce would mean for them.  This fear and my commitment as a mother propelled me forward: I wanted to do everything I could to help my kids not only survive but thrive despite that fact that our family, as we had known it, was no longer in tact.  My devotion to my kids created a wall of protection, around all of us.  My stupid mistakes post-separation/divorce didn’t ruin us because while I didn’t always make the best decisions for myself, my kids were spared the consequences of my stumbles.

“I was honest,” I told K.  “Even when the truth didn’t paint me in the best light, I was honest about my pain, my mistakes, and my fears, with a small group of people I trusted.  I didn’t walk around pretending like the divorce matter or didn’t hurt.”  If I didn’t acknowledge the hurt, I could never have moved past it. I refused to flail around or posture at my kids’ expense.  I didn’t broadcast my troubles to the world, but neither did I feel the need to lie about my well-being to people who cared about me. So I had to be honest and ask for the help I needed–from friends, family, and kindly therapists.  I wish I could say that I was motivated to do this for myself but truly, at my lowest points, my kids were my primary motivation.

“The other thing,” I said to K, “was that I didn’t need marriage in order to feel worthy.”  I am remarried, but I had also been open to the possibility of never marrying again.  I didn’t need marriage to make me feel whole or respectable. Divorce was embarrassing to me for a time, but not shameful.  Shame lingers and keeps healing from happening. The shame of divorce or feeling of loneliness can push people into rebound or reckless dating–or worse, rebound marriage.  In the case of Ms. “What happened to her?”, her rush into a rebound marriage has brought with it many problems and obligations, compounding already rough post-divorce circumstances,.  I’ve always believed that there are far worse things in life than being alone.  Loneliness drove me to some “What the hell was I thinking?” dating situations that served to confirm this belief, ultimately.  These situations also helped me to clarify my values and priorities.  They were mistakes that I learned from.

In the end, K and I couldn’t say with certainty “what happened to her.”  We can only make some guesses from the outside looking in.  But the conversation led me to look inward.  I was reminded of a conversation I had recently with Talibah Mbonisi, my sister-friend, and “Co-Parenting Matters” co-host.  We were talking about parenting and how it’s not our job as parents to spare our children all of life’s bumps, bruises, and disappointments.  It’s our job to model for them that it’s possible to navigate the inevitable responsibly, with grace and maturity.

So if my children or anyone else looks at me and wonders “What happened to her?”, I want them to see that life happened, divorce happened…and I picked myself up and kept going.  I want them to see that I pulled on my Big Girl Panties and set my life’s Plan B into motion.  I want them to see that despite our break-up, I honor my children’s relationships with their dad.  I want them to see that  instead of throwing pity parties, I move forward and try to handle stress and change and disappointment like a grown-up.  This is what I want to my children to see: that divorce was not the end of me.

Yesterday, BabyGirl shared with me a list of what she calls, “Thanksgiving Thanks”:

Family
Life
Friends
School
Food
Love
Books
Words
Dogs
Cats
Close [clothes]
Shoes
Fun
Trees
Colors
Ari*
The moon
Music

My heart? Melted.

*I have no idea who Ari is.

ETA: Mystery solved. Ari = air

Source

My dear husband has informed me that we’re joining some colleagues of his for a salsa rueda dance lesson, followed by a dance party, this weekend.

What’s salsa rueda, you ask?  Here’s what it’s supposed to look like:

And here’s what I’m working with:

But you know what?  I’ve got my dress and shoes picked out.  So whatever happens…I will look cute.  These are the things that matter.

At midnight, TechBooHusband FedBooHusband serenaded me with Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday to You!”  The extended remix and everythang.  He remembered that my mother and grandmother used to sing to me on my birthday, whether I was in my bedroom right down the hall, or a thousand miles away, every year until their deaths.  He knows that the singing is more than just tradition; it’s memories.

I think about my mom and grandmother more on my birthday than I do theirs.  My mother’s birthday is often lost in the shuffle of the kids’ Spring Break; I usually just let it pass without doing anything in particular.  But my grandmother’s birthday is also the anniversary of my mother’s death.  I usually make sure I have something planned that day, to keep from sinking too far down into it.

Births. Deaths. This isn’t exactly a festive post, is it? Ah, well.  It’s where my head is at, at the moment.  Appreciating each breath.  Appreciating the gift of my friends and family and all my blessings.  Forty…fabulous…free.

I’m popping this bottle in honor of TechBooHusband to celebrate his major promotion at work.  It is the culmination of perseverance, patience, and  prayer. Always being the smartest guy in the room doesn’t hurt either.  I love you and am proud of you, baby!

The ingredients I gave him: chicken, hot peppers, and eggs

The ingredients he gave me: watermelon, blackberries, and artichoke hearts

As you can see, I was at a disadvantage.  But of course, I never back down from a challenge.

Here are the results:

Chicken & cilantro sausage w/artichoke hearts sauteed in olive oil, cilantro, garlic, dry Riesling and lime.  I bought the (fresh from the Whole Foods butcher case) sausage & artichoke hearts today; everything else I had on hand.  I enjoyed this with…

…this refreshing fruit cooler made with blackberries, watermelon, dry Riesling, and sparkling lemonade.  I bought everything today, except the Riesling.

Here’s what TechBooHusband put together:

A spinach wrap with chicken, scrambled eggs, goat cheese, peppers, mushrooms, and jalapeno sauce (and some random peaches on the side…)

Here’s an inside view:

Whatever.

So, judges, what say you?

We get asked all the time, “How do you do it?”–”it” being maintain a long-distance marriage. Periodically, I offer some answers to that question here. The short answer? He’s got shared custody; I’ve got shared custody. Neither one of us wants to parent from a distance. So we do it because we love each other, love our kids, and are committed to being partners for life. The “how” flows from that: we make it work.

Me. TechBooHusband. No kids.

Yes.