Living Happily Ever After
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Second Marriage Moment #28: An Epiphany

Date: November 14, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“When you take it personally, you eat it up, and now it becomes your garbage.” (Ken Lauher)

I became a mother in 1993. I’ve done a lot of parenting (and correcting of inappropriate behavior) 24 hours a day, seven days a week, year in and year out. I’ve also done a lot of celebrating, cheerleading, taxi driving, cooking, cleaning, laundry, tutoring, teaching, friendshipping and dancing (as in, dance parties in the kitchen)—all part of the territory! Motherhood has been my greatest joy; being a mother has been the finest thing I’ve ever done.

Enter divorce. Followed by a second marriage. To a man with four children. Totally uncharted territory for me the day I became…a stepmother. Sort of. I noticed the older adult children introduced me to everyone as their “dad’s wife,” and I realized the adult children don’t see me as their parent in any form. (For the record, I’m o.k. with that. I’d probably feel the same way in their shoes.) So we like each other and get along for now, and I’m hopeful that as most great relationships are founded in friendship, with time, many relationships grow to feel like “family” and maybe that’s what will happen with us.

However the youngest child moved into my home and we began the blending process. (Life in the blender, as one friend, also divorced and remarried, told me they call it at their house!) There have been steps forward and steps backward, complicated by completely opposite family cultures.

In an effort to better understand my stepson, I found myself constantly evaluating what had to be the logic and reasoning behind his choices and behavior. It was all so different from anything I’d experienced, as a parent, before; I was always attemtping to “walk in his shoes,” which resulted in me taking some of his behavior personally.

As soon as I realized that, I was appalled! I’d never taken my other children’s behavior and choices, or any other child’s behavior and choices, personally. WHY would I ever think to do that with a stepchild?

I wouldn’t. It was my step-parenting epiphany.

Second marriage moment #28: don’t take the choices or behavior of stepchildren personally. I don’t think it’s ever about you, it’s about the situation. So just let it go, every time, and love them anyway.

Pretty good advice for life, too.

What Do You Do When The Feds Come?

Date: April 13, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

Last April, one year ago, government authorities came to my home, as a result of my spouse’s crimes and ponzi scheme, and seized many of our possessions.  (To those not experienced with these kinds of things, lol, I’m talking about when they officially show up and haul everything away!)

What do you do when The Feds come?

I don’t know what other people do, but I spent the morning putting away clutter that had accumulated during our three weeks of trauma thus far so The Feds wouldn’t think we housed a criminal AND were trashy, dirty, messy people!

The U.S. Marshalls arrived in the afternoon and began packing things up and hauling them away.  My spouse wanted me to be gone, but I stood my ground and stayed.  I had done nothing wrong.  And besides, where was I going to go?

I can tell you what my neighbors did.  They all took the day off work to watch our demise.  They stood on the deck of our next door neighbor’s home, with drinks in their hands, watching our downfall while their children and grandchildren ran and played around them.  They talked, gestured, pointed, and appeared to glory in all that was our lot.

Meanwhile, reporters and camera men came and filmed the proceedings and a few of our neighbors followed them around, walked with them, and made sure they filmed all angles of our home and property.  Some of our neighbors stood, with their own cameras, and filmed my children and I coming and going as well.  Several reporters rang our doorbell; one even asked my spouse for a comment.  He declined to comment but said that He had four children and would appreciate it if the children could be left alone.  The reporter said, “I understand,” and walked away.

Despite the fact I’d worked as a journalist, I doubted my peers.  I didn’t think they could possibly understand.  But I guess they did, after all.  I never saw one report that included any photographs of my children or myself.

Later, the neighbors moved their gathering to the cul-de-sac in front of my house.  As I arrived home after running an errand and attempted to drive to my driveway, those same neighbors stood in their group, talking amongst themselves, blocking the road, unmoving, and glaring at me.

What do you do?  I laughed. (Inside.)

I laughed and joked with myself at what I like to refer to as their trust of me, my character, and my emotional stability in the face of my trauma.  Clearly they had NO CLUE how fragile I felt on the inside or they never would have stood, blocking my way, as I sat in the driver’s seat of an SUV, engine running, my foot inches away from the accelerator!

It entertained me the whole time I waited for them to finally move, and as I drove down the driveway and into my garage.

What else did we do when The Feds came?

We had my son’s birthday cake that night. (Note:  The government was sensitive to our family situation.  They intentionally scheduled the seizure of our assets for the day after my son’s birthday so that he wouldn’t have the seizure as his 16th birthday memory. However, my son got so many treats from friends who went out of their way to be kind to him on his birthday that he didn’t want his birthday cake that day. So we had it the next day–and that’s how we ended up having birthday cake the first day of the seizure.) The day The Feds came.

A friend drove my 3rd grader home from lacrosse practice that day but my son was afraid to get out of the car due to the circus of media, neighbors, and U.S. Marshalls everywhere.  I went out and brought him in to be with us.  There was a feeling in the air that even a little boy could sense and it must have engendered some defensive instinct in him because he turned to me as we walked into the house and said, “Mom, do you know what I want to say to all those people?”

I asked, “What?”

And he lifted his pinky in the air to let me know he wanted to give them a finger…or THE finger.  (I didn’t even know he knew about that yet!)

What do you do when The Feds come?

I laughed, I put my arm around him, and I encouraged him to rise above all of the filth of venomous hatred and choose the right (although a part of me certainly could relate to his desire!)

That’s what WE did when The Feds came.