Girl, Abruptly

So one thing I haven’t written about yet is the fact that I have a stepdaughter. I dislike that word, and also the word stepmom because they have some negative connotations. We’ve been discussing the possibility of new titles, like Lark and Skywriter. Or Mentor and Chaos. At any rate, the title is not what’s important here. What is important is that THERE’S A GIRL IN MY HOUSE. For the sake of accuracy I will state that there has been one previously, which would be me. But I’m just me, and I require no adjustment to that.

So now there’s a pre-teen lady living here a good bit of the time, and that is, on the main, very awesome. She’s a lovely person, funny and sweet and thoughtful. Thoughtful to a degree that very few children are, actually adults too. She’s the kid who tells you you look pretty when you’re dressed up to go out, or asks if there’s something wrong when you soundly abuse everyone within hearing range after a rough day at work (by abuse, I mean saying specifically, identifiably, venty things like, “You are a horrible child. You have harmed the Earth. Clearly you do not care about lemurs or squirrels or even dolphins {I snicker, enchanted with my eloquent ire when faced with tiny paper bits on floor},” or “YOU’RE THE WRONG BACKPACK! {One child says, mom, this is the wrong backpack.}) My kids are accustomed to this, and find it mostly funny. I am an even-keeled parent, who does not yell or scream or berate. So they have little motivation to discern what mood is behind the abuse. I mean, historically, it could be anything from boredom to anger to I love you.

But this girlie, this very, very kind and disarming girlie, says things like, “Is everything ok?” when one is venting. Because she is outrageously observant of the people around her, and has this enormous heart that can’t allow sadness or pain to exist in her presence without feeling it too. So I tell her, “I’m good, darling. Sometimes it’s rough at the hospital. I’m taking it out on everyone.” And we laugh, and she gets it, and I hope she feels reassured that I am an adult in control of my emotions. Well I rarely display evidence to the contrary so I guess that’s mostly a given. But still.

I find that I am more careful of how I am around her, as a woman. Like I’m not a big self-criticizer but my god I would rather never slap a manatee than say “I’m fat” or something like that around her. I mean, I’m careful about stuff like that around the boys, too, because of the ENORMOUS TASK OF SHAPING MINDS and all that, but I don’t feel it would directly potentially devastate their own personal body image for life if I was concerned about my back fat around them. Just feels a little higher urgency with a young lady around, I guess. Also I should not be such a wuss with killing bugs.

We decorated her room recently and it involved pink and sparkly chandelier and, well, she actually cared about all of it. Which my boys do not, emphatically. Like how can you not care about the color of your room? By being my sons, apparently. But Emma, she was totally into it. Which was quite fun, and did highlight some of my shortcomings in the pink-knowledge areas of the world. But still I performed adequately in the areas of light fixture and room arrangement.