MOTHERING

Stepfamilies: New Songs, Many Ghosts

by Fern Kupfer

Stepfamilies are many things, and complicated is one of them. Myex-husband. His ex-wife. My kids. His kids. (Never mind all thegrandparents!) What a crazy quilt of memory our family albums preserve.There's baby Gabi being held by her father. In another house in anotherstate, there's newborn Megan in her mother's arms. There's Gabi with anew red bookbag the first day of junior high, me waving goodbye. Yearslater, me waving goodbye to a junior-high Katie: new stepdaughter, newhouse, new life.

In original families, the pictorial history is clearly explained.This is your mother, your father. Look in the album. There's thatpicture of us at a dance; that's me in Daddy's first car; we met at thisparty. (Children love to hear the story of how their parents first met,the occasion taking on the drama of a grand romance.)

One of the complications in stepfamilies is that the ex-spouseremains - not only as part of the permanent collection in familyalbums, but also as a spirit, a kind of uninvited ghost, hovering aroundthe living room, sitting down with you at the kitchen table. Like a fewsummers ago, when my daughter and stepdaughters were together fordinner. Passing the salad, Katie began to sing a U2 song she had justheard on the radio. "No singing at the table," my daughter, Gabi, saidsternly. Then we both burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?" Katie wanted to know. We told her. It was the NoSinging at the Table Rule, invoked by Gabi's father when she was 7 or 8and mindlessly humming one evening. "No singing at the table," herfather had proclaimed. Then he realized how silly his declarationsounded. As soon as he said it, we all laughed. And over the years, NoSinging at the Table became a family joke. Now it's a joke for a newfamily.

It wasn't always that I could easily appropriate material from thefirst marriage, could recall with laughter my other life. I know thereare some people who have had amicable divorces, but I was not amongthem. My first marriage ended six years ago with a bang, not a whimper.When my ex told me he still wanted to be "friends" after the divorce andsuggested that sometime we could still go out for dinner, I wasincredulous. How could I be friends with someone who hurt me so, withsomeone I could never trust? Go out to dinner? He might just as wellhave proposed that we take up skydiving together.

My daughter suffered because of my animosity. While I knewintellectually that it was wrong to bad-mouth her father, I was notalways successful at biting back my words. Sometimes I could hardly saythe word "Daddy" to her without the bile rising in my throat.

The result was that for a while, Gabi never spoke of her father tome. It was as if the story of the 16 years that we all lived togetherbecame part of some secret, sealed document.

Well, time heals all wounds. Or at least time toughens up the scarsso we're not still bleeding all over the place. A good career and aterrific new marriage help. I don't have dismemberment fantasies aboutmy first husband anymore. I don't even wish him unhappiness. We can talkcivilly on the phone about who's going to pick up our daughter at theairport, about sharing the tab for her health insurance. We're notfriends (trust still being a necessary ingredient in that relationshipfor me), but we're not enemies either. We're ex-spouses. We've shared ahome and a life and had children together whom we both dearly love.

I recognize now how important it is for children to be able to speakfreely about the mother or father they used to live with, and I nolonger have to work so hard at this -- to welcome the spirit of myex-husband into my new home. My daughter knows that lots of times withhim were funny, lots of times were good; it would be false not toembrace that. The photographs in our albums of two proud parents leaningover the crib of a new baby, of family vacations at the beach; the songsher father made up to sing her to sleep; the stories of my childhood andhis - that was the way we were. It is my daughter's history to claim,to weave into the fabric of her own family mythology.

Talking about the past is difficult if we continue to carry aroundbaggage where we store the grievances against our ex-mates. We cannotshare our stories and our family albums as expansively as we shouldunless we let go of the bitterness and are able to recall ourex-partners in generous and sometimes even affectionate ways. The ghostsof our ex-spouses can be friendly ones if we invite them in, if we giveour children permission to sing with them at the table. It is only theghosts we deny who continue to haunt us.

We divorced parents don't have to be friends with our ex, but weshould remember that our children are from us both. That there was oncea time when we were young and in love and the child we made with eachother was a testament to all the hope and promise of our livestogether.

Fern Kupfer is a novelist and writing professor at Iowa State University. She is a frequent contributor to Working Moms' Internet Refuge.

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