Time is marching by a bit too quickly for my liking. We recently celebrated my older stepdaughter’s 21st birthday, and I still can’t get used to any of the kids having ages in the 20s, even though three of them do by now.
When I created my stepdaughter’s birthday card, I went through my file of photos, everything from baby pictures to silly pictures with her dad, sticking out her tongue, or the two of them conspiring to concoct goofy poses right before I took the picture. Some of the pictures feel like so long ago, yet just yesterday, at the same time.
The photo I chose for her card was one of our favorites, when she was very tiny, maybe 3 or 4 years old, wearing a pink cardigan, running clumsily through the grass with the sun shining on her smiling face. I remember her being proud of herself for being able to reach the knob of the front door and open it by herself. That same face sat across from us recently at her birthday dinner, holding hands with her boyfriend, talking about her college classes, her job.
The day that picture was taken, all of us were so much younger. My husband and I had not been together long at all yet. We were still getting to know each other. We were already under relentless attack but already learning to reach out to each other for support and stability and sanity.
If you would have told me back then that someday, I would be sitting at my stepdaughter’s birthday dinner with both my husband and his ex-wife, I would have been skeptical. I admit, I find it a bit odd to be expected to sit at the same table with someone who has harassed me for decades and still stalks me to this day. It would be well within my right to refuse. But my stepdaughter wanted a birthday dinner, and none of this has ever been her fault or her responsibility.
So I went. I smiled. I ignored the staring, the whispering, and everything else I have gotten used to over the years. And I focused on my stepdaughter, something that others have yet to learn.
A funny thing happened: I ended up having fun. My husband and my stepdaughter are like characters in a sitcom when they get together, and I kept laughing at their conversations and reactions to each other. Better yet, my stepdaughter had fun, and I like seeing her happy.
Driving home, my husband and I chatted, whether we liked the restaurant, how our food was, laughing again at jokes made around the table. My husband was quiet a moment, then said, “Every time we are sitting like that, with her across from me and you beside me, makes me realize how lucky I am that I am with you.”
So much could have happened over the years. They could have tried again. I could have walked away from the constant assault. We could have grown tired of the senseless battlefield and given up. One of us could have met someone else, or moved away, or any number of chance circumstances that would have led down very different paths.
Instead, the two people playing in the back yard that day with a little girl in a pink sweater ended up riding home from her 21st birthday celebration together, holding hands in the truck, heading back to their little house and garden. They made it through that battlefield. They made it by trusting each other and holding onto each other during every storm. They grew closer, raised a family, built a home. And now, they deserve to enjoy every moment together: traveling, watching sunsets, playing hooky from work to spend one more day with each other, staying home some days and blissfully doing nothing, watching football and cheering for each other’s team, swapping inside jokes and nicknames and laughing like crazy people, simply sharing as much of each other’s todays together, where they are both happiest.
Sweat & Sparkle 