The Library Card is Overdue

I am calling a meeting with the family before my step son and daughter in law leave on their Far east sojourn. I cannot let this lie until November when their arrival back home will signal a different set of rules that I need for this continued relationship to work for me. I know it works for my wife but not for me. I cannot continue to enable a couple that needs to be on their own. And frankly I need to feel comfortable in my own house again. The way things are just make me feel resentful and frankly not happy. 

My son likes to over react and tries to tip the see saw to make me feel guilty as if I am telling him to leave. This is just not so. What I need is more cooperation in help around the house like the three of us already do. And I need not to hear that he is going out to dinner twice in one week and that he adds nothing  to the running of the household expenses. The free ride is over, two years is a long time for a book to be out of the library. 

I love my step son and his lovely bride and no one can tell me different, even him. 

Elvis Has Left the Building. Goodbye Dad.

It took nearly 63 years but as I stared into the cloudy blue eyes of my 85 year old Father and asked him who I was he said quietly he didn’t know. I knew right then my Father had left this world in spirit. I showed him a picture of my Mother and he in younger days he recognized himself but didn’t know who the woman was who stood by his side thick or thin for one day short of 50 years of marriage.  His body still occupies space and he still enjoys every morsel of food but other than that Elvis has left the building.  

When I played “The Summer Wind” and told him the singer was Frank Sinatra, Old Blue Eyes (His favorite crooner) he said: It doesn’t sound like Sinatra.  I was nonplussed. There was no need for self-recrimination because I had said everything I needed to tell him some 4 years earlier when he had some cognitive function left.  When your loved one doesn’t know they don’t know the only thing left are prayers. I petition my Mother gone some 14 years now to please take our Dad back to her side.  

 My beloved sister took care of him in her home for nearly a year and for the life of me I don’t know how she mustered the strength to do it. She had a little help from my “Solid Like a Rock” brother in law but even still the Herculean task was a rock not many could budge. My sister is an angel incarnate on earth but even her loving care was no match for Father Time. 

At Christmas dinner after he had downed an exquisite meal my younger sister had prepared he then  asked the young man next to him that had picked him up from the Nursing Home if he might take him back if it was convenient. That young man was his Grandson but he had no idea who he was either.

Time heals all wounds and now it's time to say goodbye.

Epilogue

I hesitated writing in this blog again because after all my stint as a Step Dad is over but there are residual hurts that plague me now and then. This is by no means an indictment of my former stepchildren because after all they have families of their own now and although I am persona non grata I hope one day they remember a couple of things. One is that I tried to give them the best life I could when their own biological father was in absentia and was just the man that sired them that’s all. 

Second I hope that my stepson remembers that his own son was sired under my roof and that his lovely Chinese wife would not have entered the country had I not rendered my backing financially because they had no visible means of support. Hell his father told him to send his then fiancé back to Mainland China and forget this whole marriage idea. Now he has a grandson courtesy of yours truly.  He is a beautiful child by the way. 

My former charges also forget that I didn’t marry them I married their mother and as they threw me under the bus they continue to pay homage to a man that never held one responsibility as they grew up. And I hope that they realize that it was their mother alone that raised them not their figure of fun daddy.  Okay I better stop writing now I know this will get me in trouble but the cats are quite literally out of the bag now.    

I know what I did and what I didn’t do and nothing my former make believe family can say will change that. My wife was not make believe. 

Oh and that picture above was me. I was a figurehead with no judicial powers. 

Happy Father's Day

I extend a Happy Father’s Day to a young man experiencing his 1st.   I have had my issues with him over the course of the past 14 years but on this Sunday I wish the proud papa his day in the sun with his son.  Even he might not have thought this day would arrive when I first met him at age 13. Hell I never thought he would pull his pants up around his waist but I guess he finally did. 

 No easy task in these economic times to be raising a young family but I will always wish him a way to succeed and remember him in my prayers.  HFD, Vin. 

I wish my father a Happy Father's Day as well as he experiences his 61st.  

Ruminations

Although my tenure of being a stepdad has ended I have learned a lot in 13 years. On the plus side I lived the life of a father and had true devotion from the children sired by another. My stepson now a young man with a family of his own presented the most challenges to me and yet he stood as steadfast as he could to be fair and not side unfairly with his birth mother. I will always appreciate that because as I have said many times here blood is indeed thicker than water and it would have been easy for him to stick to his nuclear roots.  

My step daughters although they have not spoken to me once since the breakup I do not blame them for siding with their mother after all she gave them a life when their natural father gave them nothing except a genetic code. On the plus side as well was the fact that I was forced out of my selfish ways because I needed to compensate for children that were egocentric as all children are but I was not used to.  I got a lesson in psychology too in that what was important to me mattered little to them.  

Of course in many ways I felt used, abused and ignored even though my blended family would deny any such thought but if I had established boundaries and kept my ego in check I could have avoided most of the heartbreak I face now.  

Purgatory

Although I have suspended my entries for the time being in Step Dad I will be continue to be affected for the foreseeable future even if I never see someone else’s charges ever again. And I know that finance for their future journey will continue to come from me because of my wife’s truly unselfish nature I have to let go of it.  I can easily mire myself in resentment as to what went on in this 13-year segment of my life but I will keep my wife in my care because she will continue to keep her offspring in hers. Some people never grow up and that includes stepchildren and yours truly step dad.  She will go to heaven I know that I will have a long sentence in purgatory although some might wish me to Go to Hell.  

Blood Is Thicker Than Water

A word from my own experience and that is don’t ever fool yourself into thinking that your stepchildren have a deeper allegiance to you than their biological father no matter how much of a screw up he is or was.  There are exceptions of course but if you inherit children from the age of majority don’t fool yourself into thinking that you have ensconced yourself into their hearts unless of course you have a bank account.  

And their mother will roll out every excuse imaginable as to why they are behaving a certain way. It’s not her fault she is just doing her best to rationalize her offspring’s behavior that you have nothing to do with. And most probably to be fair the damage done by their father (which they will always forgive) has left them scarred. And be prepared to be the object of their frustration to take it out on.  

I learned much as a step dad and your experience might be much different than mine was but remember this: Blood is thicker than water.