Roles and Expectations
My marriage was bookended by death.
So begins the first chapter of my memoir. At least for now. I’m not sure for how long I’m allowed to be happy to have completed a draft two years ago, but as I work on revisions, I have to hold onto that happiness. That sense of accomplishing an important step. Because right now, I’m re-writing what I think might be the beginning and it’s going so slow. So very very slow.
A selfie at The Met Cloisters in front of Everything #4, 2004 by Adrian Piper.
“Everything #4 invites you to contemplate its otherworldly proclamation and your reflection in a variety of contexts. Here, among the tomb effigies of the Gothic Chapel, the work encourages meditation on the frailty of the human body and the ephemeral nature of life itself.”
Two days before my son was born, his father’s best friend died in a horrific accident roughly 240 miles away from where we were living. For years, I’ve had a hard time conveying the impact of this loss combined with the birth of my son. In the last decade I’ve read several essays[1] by mothers writing about how death and birth are so intertwined. I often read them looking for inspiration, but this has always been more complicated for me.
It’s been almost twenty years since that loss and birth collided, and though I feel like I can sum up my relationship with this friend to a handful of interactions, I always come up short in describing the emotional impact. Also, the descriptions have been so weak. A friend I barely knew, or my husband’s best friend are such puny words. What do you picture when I say that? For years, I’ve made lists about this person as if it will change something, evoke a new perspective, a new angle, to no real avail. I couldn’t quite figure out why until recently, when someone asked me if I had two sons. “Technically,” I answered. I stumbled over my words, attempting to describe a blended family that is not well blended. It left me feeling bad, like I was trying to create distance between me and my stepson, not adequately describing any relationship.
The titles we give people carry so much weight. When I see or hear stepfather, I immediately think of my abuelo Fernando, of how I didn’t even know he wasn’t my father’s biological father until I was in elementary school, how I never thought twice about my father calling him Fernando instead of papi. Because after all, this man loved us like a grandfather. He rushed my mother to the hospital when she was in labor with my brother, he scolded my father when he needed to get his act together, he laughed when everyone else was mad at me, taking me to the airport when I couldn’t take another semester in that Miami heat and wanted to go home. And when he was dying from emphysema, he took his oxygen mask off to blow kisses to my toddler, straining to make sure to say, “I love you.” So when there’s an unkind, unloving, abusive stepfather in a story, I feel what I suspect is a larger sense of betrayal because how dare they. Versus, if I can relate to something awful, it gives me that sad/not surprised/the world is so fucked up feeling.
To describe my stepson as mine feels like a betrayal to his mother. It erases her. He never lived with us, I came into his life when he was fourteen, any decisions in his life were not made by me at all. I always felt more like an aunt when giving him advice. And yet, I do feel like I have two kids. He’s a big part of our lives if not literally (he’s 28 now), emotionally. I’ve watched him grow up for almost fifteen years. We worry about him the way any parent worries about their kid. In Spanish, the word for stepmother is madrastra, stepson is hijastro, words that conjure up dramatic images from the telenovelas of my childhood. The words are like boulders in my mouth. So uncomfortable to say, heavy, full, with sharp edges.
I revisited Sarah Orah Mark’s brilliant essay “The Evil Stepmother” when I was thinking about my role as stepmother and the meaning of these titles. I read it when it was first published in 2019 and it stayed with me ever since. She captures the brutal complexity of a role often portrayed as awful. There’s a line in the essay where she says, “Should I even be writing any of this down?” And it rings so true to me. I often worry about any mention of my stepson in my writing, second guessing myself, questioning meaning and intention over and over in a way that I don’t think I do for anyone else. If I don’t mention him, will people think he’s not important to me? Will they imagine a greater distance than actually exists? Will they picture me as the evil stepmother?
I remarried when my son was almost seven years old, and my husband took on a big role in raising him. A part of me wonders what people picture when they know that he’s stepdad. Do they wonder about his father? Do they wonder if it was difficult for my son? Or if they get along?
What do you picture? When you hear the words mother, stepmother, sister, father, cousin? The list goes on and on. These designations come loaded with images, feelings, experiences. How do we adequately convey what each title means to us or to our characters? Is it through contrasts? Highlighting expectations and disappointments maybe?
Leon. My ex-husband’s friend who died, who I can’t seem to call my friend, his name was Leon. And so now I’ll go journal about the feelings that have come up, the hesitation on my part, even the fear, to calling him my friend. It’s the only way I know how to figure out—hopefully, finally—how to honestly convey his role.
Wish me luck.
[1] I’m really bummed I can’t find these essays right now. I’m thinking of literary magazines like Catapult and Paris Review, maybe Longreads? If you know of any of the essays I’m talking about, please send them my way!
