I was selling my book at the LA Times Festival of Books today, when I heard a woman’s voice say “Don’t I know you?” After about five minutes of cross-referencing, we figured out that we had shared a cabin at a church camp about 12 years ago, had had Thanksgiving together at my old house once, and had sworn never to lose touch. Which of course we had.

In the last twelve years or so, she has triumphed over two bouts of cancer and raised a spectacularly talented and beautiful Juilliard-bound daughter (who came by the booth and graciously asserted that she remembered me.)

In the last twelve years or so, I have disbanded my marriage, written a book, watched my own children grow up in an equally spectacular manner, and have done all the rest of the things one does when one is living life fully.

What was interesting about meeting up with her was that she was one of the first people I’ve talked to in years who didn’t know about the divorce. When I told her about it, she gasped and expressed concern and sadness. I felt instantly sorry that I had mentioned it so casually, but then realized how very far away from the whole “tragedy” aspect of it I have moved.

I hastened to assure her that it was all fine. I pitched her the book (of course), saying the long version of the story was in there. Then I told her about Jill and about this blog. I told her I had just started a really promising new relationship with a guy I’m crazy about. And I told her about my blossoming friendship with the mother of my new guy’s son. Even though I’m not nearly yet in the role of step mom, I now have a biological mom in my own life to be grateful for and to get to know.

In my fantasies I see my fella, his ex, their son, and the five of us Doughties all eating together at Thanksgiving, pouring wine for each other and embarrassing the boys with revealing family histories. Whether that cinemascope version of the extended family actually comes to pass or not, the fact remains that this has turned into a big rollicking happy fun family.

As I listened to my words I realized that I was being absolutely and completely sincere, almost like I was proselytizing divorce. I couldn’t imagine, actually, being happier in any way (well, in any way that still includes having a work a day job). I felt incredibly guilty as well, especially when she mentioned that she had raised her daughter all by herself. And here I was with all these extra adults supporting and advocating my kids!

Now… as the child of parents who were married eight times between the two of them, I have no difficulty remembering that divorce is always a wrenching, uncomfortable, psychologically disturbing event. In no way do I want to present it as anything other than a difficult and painful transition.

And yet… it can be alchemized. You can take all the messiness and ugliness and, with compassion and mindfulness and LOTS of luck, and move it into something else. It takes time — there is no substitution for the passage of time. And it takes a huge quantity of humor. And I cannot emphasize the consciousness part of it enough.

But I believe it can be done. And it should be done. Because otherwise we’ve capitulated to the dark side and the ugly side and agreed that that’s how life is and always will remain. And what a drag that would be.

Both G and I have been with both kids every Christmas of their lives. And whether or not that’s a truly important statistic, it feels kind of important. Important enough for us to have made the effort to figure out some strategies that seem pretty sensible. Maybe other dual-households can benefit by hearing how we work it.

Even before we were divorced, there was kind of a division between how G and I celebrated the holiday. Historically, his parents were big on Christmas Eve dinner and he was happy to cook that. We’d all go on our annual visit to the local Unitarian Church, sing Christmas Carols that carefully tried to avoid as much mention of Jesus as possible (I love the Unitarians), and then G would run home to finish dinner while I’d drive around for awhile looking at the lights with the kids. Then we’d come in to a house full of good smells and steaming food and proceed to eat and open some presents.

It’s not that much different living in two houses. I go over there for Christmas Eve dinner, we open presents from each other and from G’s side of the family, and eat ourselves into stupification. Then, depending on where the kids are staying, one or several of us crawls back down to my house, where we reconvene in the morning to open my side of the presents and eat and drink ourselves into an even more advanced state of self-loathing. We follow the traditions of his side of the family most devotedly, mainly because his family traditions include the most drinking and eating.

A couple of our ground rules:

1) Each house can choose exactly how to celebrate its part of the holiday. If one house wants to pick up In N Out burgers and watch Nickelodeon re-runs, that’s absolutely fine.

2) Jill is adamant about keeping all pot luck aspects of the meals out. I personally don’t believe in this as strongly as she does, but we do abide by her wishes. The hosting house is the host; the guest is the guest. I do get that keeping the boundaries clean makes for better role-playing. I walk into the other house not as a former occupant, nor as a helper in the evening’s meal, but as a pure guest, expecting to be able to relax. Which is nice. Really nice.

3) Whatever we decide to do is OK. This year we’re putting on a huge spread, on both sides. Traditional food, big eats. But next year may be different. We don’t want to get stuck in a tradition that confines rather than enhances.

Of course this system only works if you like each other, for starters. And if you live pretty close to each other. If those two things are reasonably within reach, however, I think it works well. The cooking is evenly divided, the kids get to open presents twice, and there’s a kind of glorying in the separateness between the houses. It becomes a movable feast, which is what life should be like every day.

Chilling.

I just looked up some statistics on second marriages and, boy, they are not good. When Jill and I first started talking about this blog, we tried to figure out roughly how many marriages were second marriages and how many ended in divorce. We both guessimated — based on what? a hope that humans can actually learn from their mistakes? — that second marriages were statistically less likely to end in divorce.

Wrong.

Dead wrong.

Divorce rates for second marriages? About 60 – 80% .

At the high end, that’s almost double the divorce rate for first marriages (47%).

So why do second marriages end? Mainly because of two things: Complexity and money. Money is relatively easy to deal with (here’s an excellent guideline) — as long as you are willing to be brutally honest with yourself and your partner. OK, I’m being a little casual about the money stuff… money is usually extremely tied to emotional issues and I’m planning on getting into it in depth in a later post. But long ago I learned that there were two kinds of problems in the world: Emotional issues and technical issues. (Losing weight is a prime example of a technical problem that very often becomes an emtional issue .) And money — as painful and crazy as it is — is really a technical issue on much the same scale as losing weight.

The complexity of living in a blended family, however, is an emotional issue. There’s no way around it. You can’t sit down with a ledger or Quicken and figure out how to deal with the biological mom, or how to make the sibs and step-sibs get along or how to reconcile the painful comments in the car that the other house is the “fun house.” That’s emotional. That’s core stuff.

And with a 60 – 80% divorce rate among second marriages, it’s not an issue you can easily dismiss.

Which means, to me, that this whole conversation about how moms and step-moms might be able to work together better is not just so that we can reduce a little stress in our lives. It really is so that the second marriage has a much better chance at surviving.

I’m going to put on my “bio mom” hat solely now. And this may seem stern and harsh, but really it’s in response to that statistic, and as an admonition to some future Kathy should I ever become a step-mom myself.

Here it is and it’s a cold hard fact:

I’m the biological mother. I am not going away, ever.

You’re the step-mother. And the statistics aren’t in your favor.

And the reason the statistics aren’t in your favor is because, in part, of me.

It’s very icky. It’s ugly to say and, projecting myself into the other household, abhorrant to hear. But, actually, it’s true. And it becomes extremely dangerous when there is still a boatload of baggage left over from the first marriage, and the whole situation is riddled with bitterness, vengefulness and anger. We, the biological parent, do have the upper hand — legally, emotionally, biologically. And if we want to weild it for evil and try to pry apart that fragile second union, we can. And we do. And that’s just so ugly for everyone, it makes me sick.

So am I saying that the step-moms of the world have to genuflect to us because we have the biological trump card? Do we now get to have final say in every decision?

Absolutely not. Because there’s another correllary to the above cold hard fact, that I wish more bio-moms would actually pay attention to, and this one goes thusly:

This step-mom also takes care of my children.

The peace that I can promote between the households directly and unequivocally affects the emotional well-being of my children.

To quote my favorite philosophical work, Spiderman: with great power comes great responsibility. Sure, you’re the legitimate owner of half of the DNA. But that comes with some responsibilities, too — because your first priority is really no longer yourself and your precious anger. Remember those first six weeks of the babies’ lives, when your entire existence was turned upside down just to ensure the survival of that little infant? That hasn’t changed. We still have to turn ourselves inside out to make sure those kids make it through the night. And the step mom is there running the other household, and she must be respected and honored for that. If you want to play that bio-card and play power games, you can. But the losers will be the children.

Let me repeat that on its own line:

The losers will be the children.

It’s more than just about making life a little nicer that we need to get this figured out. For the step-moms in the world, it’s about keeping that marriage intact. For us moms in the world, it’s about keeping our children intact.

Let’s make this a revolution. The cold hard facts are saying that blended families are becoming more and more prevalent. Let’s learn from our past mistakes, get over our anger, embrace the future possibilities, and get it together. For ourselves, for the sisterhood, and for our children.