A Stepmom On Mother’s Day

It was supposed to be different.

It was my first Mother’s Day as an “actual” mom. The first time I wouldn’t have to endure the awkwardness of being a stepmom on Mother’s Day.

I wouldn’t have to feel weird accepting gifts from my husband and stepkids because I am a mom now, even if I am not theirs.

It was my third Mother’s Days as a stepmom, but the first one I would be able to spend with all of my kids.

It felt different for many reasons. Not only am I now a mother, but I have spent every day of the past year with the kids. They don’t go away on weekends anymore, or spend their nights on the phone with their mother. I have been the one who gets them up in the morning, makes their lunches, takes them to school, helps with homework, cooks dinner, and tucks them in every single night. I feel like a mom to them now whereas on past Mother’s Day I had to share them.

In the past year the boys have spent a total of maybe 10 hours seeing their biological mother. Alex and I talked for days leading up to Mother’s Day about how we were going to handle the day with the boys. Should we have them call? Do we have them send a gift? Do we talk to them about her? Do we wait to see if they bring her up?

We were so back and forth. We still hadn’t really made a decision by that morning and even with all the talk of Mother’s Day, the boys hadn’t mentioned a word about her so we just kind of let it go.

The boys spent days working with Alex on a special project for me. They tried their absolute hardest to keep it a complete secret and were SO excited to be able to share it with me. They woke up early that day and went out with Aunt Rachel to bring home my favorite Starbucks drink. I had cards addressed to “mom” and was showered with hugs and excitement of a Happy Mother’s Day.

It was such a happy morning.

All of a sudden the phone rings and the whole mood changes.

I was in the middle of cutting Alex’s hair so we couldn’t answer right then.

Later, after much discussion over what we should do, we had the boys call their mom. They talked for about twenty minutes and then said their goodbyes.

In an ideal world we would be able to have these phone conversations and that’d be the end of it. They’d feel happy they could speak to their mom and we would be able to continue on and enjoy all the other things we had planned.

But, we can’t.

We were heading to my Mother-in-laws where the kids could run around outside and jump on the trampoline. We get there and Jack wouldn’t leave my side. He sat in the same chair as me, asked if he had to play or if he could stay on the porch with me, and just seemed totally not himself. I asked him if he was feeling funky and he asked to talk in private.

We spent over an hour sitting in the front yard talking to each other. He cried and I cried while he tried to explain to me everything his little 8 year old body was feeling.

He asked if he could give the gift he made me to his other mom because she wouldn’t have wanted him to give it to me. He worried her crying earlier on the phone was his fault. He asked, worrily, if he was going to have to go back there to live because mom said “things would change soon”. He asked why things are like this and why his brother can just play happy and not think about it. He asked if I could erase all his memories of how it used to be so he could just think about our family now.

He had lots to say (not all I feel he’d want shared on my blog). The conversation was honestly just heartbreaking. A day he had been SO excited to celebrate turned into one of his saddest days yet.

Jack and I have gotten very close in the past three years. He refers to me as his mom to other people and interchangeably uses ‘Suzanne’ and ‘Mom’ when talking to me. Yesterday he asked if him and I could just move away and not deal with anybody else. He so often feels guilty for viewing me as a mom and I am constantly having to assure him that loving me doesn’t mean he has to love his mom any less.

After this long conversation he goes “That’s all I really had to say but I just want to say you’re the best mom I ever had and I love you”. Then he just hugged me and cried for what felt like an eternity.

I realized yesterday that Mother’s Day won’t ever really be celebrated as happily as it should be. I spent days having to think and talk about their mother with my husband, and then spent the majority of the actual Mother’s Day talking about her with my son and then my husband again.

There’s probably nothing more upsetting to have to talk about all day than the woman your husband used to be married to.

And the saddest part is that it won’t just be a difficult holiday for me, but it’s going to be a difficult holiday for my stepkids too. They’ll have to battle all those emotions they keep tucked down inside and think about the relationship they have with their mother. They’ll have to battle feeling guilty celebrating their stepmom while their mother spends the day without them. All things a child should never have to feel.

Even though I am a mother, and feel like a mother to them, Mother’s Day will always be a reminder that I am not their mom.

There are a lot of things about life as a stepmom that just isn’t what it’s supposed to be.

Mother’s Day is just another one of those things.