Broken Open by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781407060989
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

Gift

There’s a card I keep above my writing desk, tacked to the wall with other icons of inspiration, that I would never have imagined receiving when I first became a stepmother. It’s a pink cut-out card of Glinda, the good witch from The Wizard of Oz. Inside the card, in my stepson’s unmistakable Neanderthal handwriting, is this message:

In a world of wicked stepmothers, you are my Glinda.

Love, Michael

Michael gave me that card when he graduated from high school, ten years after our families joined in that most awkward amalgamation called the “blended family.” In those ten years, Michael and I climbed a steep learning curve, in which he learned how to calm down and trust, and I learned how to loosen up and love. Sounds pretty tidy on the printed page, but it was anything but tidy raising three sons, one of whom arrived as a seven-year-old toting some awfully heavy chimidunchik.

From the outside, it all looked pretty perfect: He was the son of the man I loved, equally spaced in years between my boys, and a sweet-hearted child with gobs of energy and enthusiasm. At first, Michael lived during the school year in Los Angeles with his mother and stepfather, and spent school vacations with us. By the time he made the difficult choice to move to our home he was eleven, and had crisscrossed the continent more times each year than a traveling salesman. It seemed he was continually suspended between time zones and his mother’s and father’s worlds. In L.A., he was raised by a nanny and exposed to things I didn’t think were good for kids—lots of television, junk food, and late-night parties. When he was with us, we went hiking and river rafting, and ate health food. The contrast was striking, and it created tension between Michael and me when I tried to control what I considered unacceptable behavior. I was used to the antics of boys, but as I perceived it, Michael was from another species altogether. He was so full of nervous energy that he literally bounced off the walls.

A combination of events motivated Michael to move from his mother’s home in L.A. to ours in upstate New York. The constant travel was hard on him; he was unhappy at home and in his school; his father wanted nothing more than to protect and nurture him; and from the beginning, Michael and my sons had decided they were brothers. So it seemed right for him to move in. My husband was ecstatic, my sons were excited, and Michael was ready. Only I was wary. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Michael; it was me I was concerned about. I was afraid I would turn into a hypercritical witch—a wicked stepmother—if I had to incorporate Michael’s rambunctious energy into our daily life. I had already seen and not liked who I became on the vacations he spent with us. I did not want to know anything more about those parts of me—the parts that cared more about being in control than about a little boy’s need for love.

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