Nibbles to the Rescue, or How a Hamster Helped Me Be More Than Just an Evil Stepmother

Okay, so it's about time this parenting blog of mine addressed the fact that I am now doing an entirely new form of parenting. Of course, taking into consideration the frequency (or lack thereof) that I've found time to add to this blog of late, this is still pretty fresh news. I am now a stepmother. It's something I never hoped to be, to be honest. Something I was glad never to have in my own life. Something I don't have great associations with. Does anybody? I've heard my share of stepmother horror stories from my peers growing up. My colleague in the Bronx, Eric, was a source of many. He used to talk about his stepmother's "dragon-lady fingernails." At least I don't have to worry about that. At any rate, when Gio and I became a couple, I became stepmother to two little boys I hadn't even met. I guess that's not so strange. Every child is sort of an unknown quantity, right? But step-parenting comes with a lot of its own issues, I have found. I am learning a ton about myself, about the role of stepmother itself, and about those two little boys through this crazy journey.

The thing I think has been the most frustrating for me as a step-parent is that I haven't gotten to be the kind of step-parent that I would have chosen to be. I would have written my character very differently. In a perfect world, I would be a stepmother kind of like the aunt I was. I would take the kids on fun outings, buy them the best birthday and Christmas presents, be someone they could talk to about anything, be an ally when they hate their parents but still really need an adult to help them find their way. Maybe if my co-parent had been a member of the military, like an old friend's second husband, I would have gotten to be that stepmom. (Although that came with a host of step-parenting problems, too, I realize). Unfortunately, that wasn't the stepmom that Leo & Vince needed me to be. They didn't need more fun outings or awesome presents. They needed to learn to treat their mother with respect. They needed to see someone do it and to have someone require them to do it as well. They needed to learn to live with a little bit of discomfort for short periods of time. They needed boundaries. They needed to learn how to live, for example, with the boundary of "no" without losing their minds. They needed to learn how to try a new food that they might not like. How to regulate their nervous systems and calm themselves down when they got overexcited. How to modulate their voices to different environments. They needed to learn that you don't just get everything you want; some things in life you have to work for and earn. They needed to learn how to do chores. How to be helpful. They needed someone with professional experience to pay attention and to notice that maybe there were some learning and attention issues here that needed to be addressed. In short, Leo & Vince needed me to be a different kind of step-parent than the one I wanted to be.

Now here's the thing: lots of people in Leo & Vince's lives didn't really think they needed all these things. Their dad thinks they are the bee's knees just the way they are. I think their grandparents, their teachers, and lots of other people in their lives probably do too. And that gets at the very heart of what it is to be a step-parent. When you are forced to live with children you did not bring into this world, and to see them living with your own children who you have put your heart and soul into raising, it does something to you. When you become a step-parent, you become the parent of other people's children. Suddenly what these children turn into as teenagers and adults is very important. I wasn't the nanny who could happily feed them junk food, plunk them in front of a computer screen, and let them have whatever they want. That nanny isn't going to know them when they're twenty-five. I plan to. But I realize also that my relationship to Leo and Vince has as much to do (maybe more!) with the role of step-parent itself as it does with the kind of kids Leo & Vince are or the kind of parents they have. I know this because my own kids now have two live-in stepmoms, (one in each house!) and it is clear to me that at least one of them feels they need a similar kind of step-parenting from her! In her world, my kids have a list of things to learn. She has even started numbering them. The other day when I was chewing out Luke for leaving the basement light on again, he told me "Rule #5 is 'Turn off the lights when you leave a room.'"

"What are rules one through four?" I asked him.

"Mostly about table manners, stuff like that," he replied nonchalantly.

Even my perfect children have an evil stepmother. And you know what? It doesn't make me mad or defensive or threatened. Bring it on, Janine! Damn, if you can get these children to actually start following rule number five, I'll try to make sure you get some kind of medal in step-parenting. Please know that it isn't that I haven't tried to teach them. We are teaching them the same lessons here. Kids are just a pain in the ass and very hard to bring up. Step-parents are volunteers in an otherwise all-draft army. The real parents have to put up with this crap. Step-parents are here under duress and the enemy is intractable in the best of circumstances. But I think step-parents can play an invaluable role in helping our kids be human beings that people besides their parents can stand to be around. I think the lessons that all four of our boys can learn from their step-parents will be invaluable.

But, in the present moment, these lessons aren't very fun. Leo & Vince didn't choose me any more than I chose them. They've figured out how this whole evil stepmother thing works and they're starting to formulate the stories they will tell about me someday, and I'm afraid they won't be very flattering. Recently Leo, who had gotten a bad behavior report from his after school program, asked Gio, "Do we have to tell Joslyn?" Now, lest you get the wrong impression, I do try to do a lot of sweet things for the boys, too. I am both the great aunt and the evil stepmother. If Gio were reading over my shoulder, she would probably reel off a list of special things I've done for them that have made them really happy. They talk about 3 Mile Island all the time. They can't wait to get back to camp. There are a lot of happy, special things in their lives because of me. But we take pictures of those things. We put them on Facebook. I feel that we are documenting those things adequately, while the bad moments (like the time I lost it at Leo for speaking rudely to his mother and in my tirade told him dramatically that Gio 'fed him from her breasts') get swept under the rug. And Leo said, "Do we have to tell Joslyn?" He said it.

So...I really needed a win. And it was his birthday. And the child loves hamsters. He can talk endlessly about how cute hamsters are. He found my old book about hamster care on my bookshelf and he and Matteo pored over it all summer. He checked out a book about hamsters from the school library. He event old us he thought he couldn’t have a hamster because who would take care of it when he was at his other house? He'd have to just content himself with going and looking at them in pet stores. So, even though Gio and I had a strict "No new babies, no new pets" policy (can you blame us? FOUR boys), we went out this weekend and picked out a hamster for Leo's eighth birthday yesterday. We bought all the supplies a hamster would need, half from me and the boys, and half from Nonna and Zaidah, who had sent some money to be spent on Leo for his birthday. I held almost every hamster in the store (except for one that bit me really hard!), and we picked out a baby girl who was shy but didn't nip, and who looked just like Gio's childhood hamster, Nibbles. Gio fell in love right away. But we were both unsure how Leo would react. It was clear to us that he understood what a great responsibility it would be to have a hamster.

Well, when he came in yesterday and saw the hamster, his reaction was very subdued. I think he was kind of in shock. It wasn't clear at first if he was even happy. I videotaped the whole thing, but it's not exactly going to become classic family footage. But once the camera was off, and it had sunk in, Leo told us more than once it was the best present ever. And he came over to Gio and I, who were standing next to each other, and pulled us both into an awkward hug, twice. They were the first premeditated hugs Leo ever gave me. Gio told me later it was the kind of hug you give your parents. The look on his little face was priceless. I told him that his mom and I knew he was going to take really good care of her, and that we would help and make sure she was taken care of while he's at his dad's. He named her "Nibbles" instantly, without even trying on any other names or seeming to think about it at all. He was so excited he had a hard time sleeping. At bedtime, when he usually reads aloud to Vince, he read the hamster book and took notes on hamster care, telling me when I checked in on them, "Because we want her to have a good life." He kept coming downstairs to say one more thing to me about her before he finally was able to fall asleep.

The boys all seem really happy and excited to have a hamster in the house. I am hoping that they won't get bored with her too quickly. Over the weekend while we were trying to find a hamster, I had emailed with a woman in New York State who runs a hamster rescue, and has many hamsters at any one time. She has a hamster playground for them to exercise in and she knows a ton about hamsters. She invited us for a visit even if we couldn’t adopt a hamster from her (it didn't work out this time), and I thought it would be really fun to bring the kids for a day trip to see what a hamster rescue looks like and ask her how to be better hamster owners to Nibbles. I'd also like us to work together on creating a fun playground for her, which I think will keep the boys interested and entertained, as well as be good for her. What I am most happy about is that Nibbles gives Leo and I common ground: something to connect over that is a true interest and passion for both of us. He may still say someday far in the future that his step mom could be evil, but hopefully then he'll think for a minute and add, "But then, she also gave me my hamster."