The DHX: The Doughtie Houses Exchange

My Father Married Your Mother: Writers Talk about Stepparents, Stepchildren and Everyone edited by Anne Burt

I wanted to cheer when I read Barbara Kingsolver’s essay “Stone Soup”. She says that families who unite in loving and supporting kids raise happy, healthy kids, and that includes big extended family groups with exes and new partners. She writes about the torture of ending her own marriage — not something she took lightly or recommends blithely — but the end of a marriage is not the same as a failure of family to her:

“Any family is a big a big empty pot, save for what gets thrown in. Each stew turns out different. Generosity, a resolve to turn bad luck into good, and respect for variety–these things will nourish a nation of children. . . . My soup contains a rock or two of hard times, and maybe yours does, too. I expect it’s a heck of a bouillabaisse.”

I wanted to yell, “Yeah, Barbara Kingsolver! You go!”

Because the rest of the book scared me. Stepparents and stepchildren wrote about slow estrangements. The agony, the coldness, the misunderstandings, the growing distance over the years when people expected to grow closer — and the tender moments offered up as good memories — both of these seemed so awful in combination that I felt physically cold when I finished the book. The good memories and the good relationships sounded so small and distant compared to what I hope for, and the falling apart over the years so easy and so — I hate to even type this — likely.

One story stuck with me in particular. Roxana Robinson met with her adult stepdaughter to ask her how it had felt to be a stepchild, and what she heard made her heart sink, and mine too:

“Painful, so much later, to hear about the chances you missed. Painful to hear about all the ways in which you fitted so neatly, so perfectly into the long savage snarl of that lupine profile. Painful to realize now, that that transparent outline held inside it a little girl, toward whom you had a chance to be the kind of person you thought you were.”

It hurt to read these stories. It hurt to accept them — even as someone else’s experience. I love the kids so much, and I want to grow closer to them over time. I want to always be connected to the kids in a warm, mutually satisfying way. I hope that no matter what, we are always family, and always want to be.

Oh please, don’t let me fail.