red balloons

It’s a chilly, rainy October morning. I am intentionally taking time away from my normal to-do list because I feel like it has been forever since I’ve had time to try to get a few thoughts out of my brain and onto paper. I have been lost in the duties and responsibilities of being a busy mom- and while I’m trying to soak in every moment, it’s also incredibly exhausting. By “taking time away,” I mean that I made my coffee, stepped out into the backyard living room, bundled under a big blanket, and I’m ignoring everything going on inside the house for a short amount of time.

In case you are not aware, the entire state of Georgia (or maybe just our particular county), has been hit HARD by strep and the flu. And unfortunately, this flu is not a quick 24-hour bug. I have spent the last 9 days with a thermometer in my pocket, going from bedroom to bedroom to strip sheets that were soaked through with sweat, refilling water bottles and delivering medicine on a set schedule. I’m hopeful that we are in the final days of it- we have been fever free for 24 hours now, without medications, and I can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. 

The constant bedroom rotation of dropping off bowls of soup and crackers and Gatorade and whatever else they felt they could keep down brought me right back to the 2020 days of the pandemic. COVID hit our house hard twice. I can’t really remember a time where only one family member was hit with any illness- whether it be flu, strep, a cold or COVID- so whenever one person gets sick, I know there’s a good chance another 50% of the household will be down within a few days so I stock up on meds and soup appropriately. 

During the pandemic, as soon as any of the children showed the slightest symptom of COVID, they were immediately quarantined to their bedroom with permission to use the bathroom only if fully masked and while using a Lysol wipe on their hand to touch anything. I’m not gonna lie and say that I never thought about faking a symptom for a day or two of peace and quiet in my own bedroom, but thankfully outside of a bout with COVID before we knew COVID was a thing (see the extraordinarily ordinary(ish) life for details), I was spared. 

While taking care of the kids who did get sick, I remember posting a picture on my Facebook profile from the original Disney animated Cinderella movie, where Cinderella was going up the stairs with a breakfast tray on each hand and one on her head to deliver food to her evil step-mother and step-sisters. If you added a mask to her face, it was me at every meal time for a full 10 days in each case. Plus, the continuous washing of bed sheets and towels and clothes and the list could go on and on… I fully expected to start speaking to the birds singing outside and mice dressed in tiny shirts and hats (except I barely had time to get myself dressed- much less make clothes for rodent friends- and also I don’t have rodents living in the house that I am aware of). And at the end of those long, tiring days, my own personal Prince Charming was always there, waiting to whisk me away on a weekend camping getaway or a quick overnight to the city to pamper me with spa treatments, rooftop pools, fancy dinners and shopping sprees. 

As my very favorite Cinderella coffee mug reminds me most mornings, “Once a princess, always a princess.” 

But this time around, while serving sick kiddos, that Cinderella-feeling got me thinking. 

Because in my current chapter of life, I am no longer living in the Cinderella role, which stopped me in my tracks for a little while. 

I am not sitting back and waiting for an invitation to just the right ball to wear just the right gown to leave just the right slipper behind so that just the right someone can swoop in and save me. For the first time in a long while (maybe ever?), all the very carefully crafted pieces of my life will not turn to something less useful at midnight. My gown will not turn into rags- mainly because I haven’t had an occasion to wear a gown in a REALLY long time and rags are about all I wear (I love a ripped jean), but also- if we take this a step further into a more emotional realm- the me that I present on a day-to-day basis is exactly who I am. I don’t have the energy to try and portray myself as anything I am not. My carriage will not turn into a pumpkin (it better not, because I work really hard to make sure I can keep that luxury carriage). I never had to use my best friends (a.k.a., the mice turned into horses) to get me anywhere, so there is no time where their support is going to be lost. 

I’m not even sure what a footman would do for me, but in the version of Cinderella I am referring to online while writing this, it says that at midnight, the footmen turned back into lizards. Let me just say that last weekend, while it was just Kylie and I in the house, she was relaxing on a couch in the den late on Saturday evening when she suddenly came screaming into the living room where I was watching a movie. Apparently, we had a lizard in the house, and it had crawled up on a curtain right next to her head. My response, as a completely rational adult, was to let her know that it couldn’t hurt her. And that was it. By the time I went into that room the next morning, our lizard friend was nowhere to be seen. I’m sure he’s living under the couch, eating bugs that ALSO shouldn’t be in the house, and I’m totally cool with that. In my head, I’ve named him Lenny and consider him a pet. I DO NOT DEAL WITH REPTILES PEOPLE (maybe I do need a footman?). In 2018, there were two lizards in my front living room one night while I watched TV. I froze in terror and watched as they scurried toward the front door and slid under the threshold. Which I then sealed shut with duct tape that is still in place today, four years later. I’m sure people have wondered about that design choice but to me it’s all about survival.

There is no timeline for when I need to have caught Prince Charming’s eye and won his heart, because I already lived that part of my story. Again, as my very favorite Cinderella coffee mug reminds me most mornings, “Once a princess, always a princess.” And there is such incredible peace and comfort in knowing that. 

While I no longer hold that princess role in the story, there is actually another role that I feel like I fit into perfectly on certain days and it has made me look at life in a very different way. It’s not a role that anyone would volunteer for. 

I am the evil step-mother. 

I believe there are days where Kylie feels like Cinderella- very much the Cinderella before the ball. Goodness gracious, it seems like the expectations that I have for the children to help around the house- just out of sheer necessity so that I don’t lose my mind- are completely unreasonable. And on weekends where the boys are at their dad’s house, many of the tasks do fall to Kylie. None of the chores are too much for any child to handle- like feeding both the cats AND the dog (it’s just one extra scoop for food- they all share a water dish). Or putting her own dishes in the dishwasher or cleaning her bathroom between the housekeeper’s visits (you can argue with me all you want but after working at a summer camp for several summers when I was in college- girls are 100% grosser than boys- and since she has the bathroom to herself, it’s her mess and I don’t want to clean it). 

Before I go any further, I want to clarify- I have been very open with Kylie about feeling this comparison. She ABSOLUTELY denies that I could EVER be the evil step-mother. She has the sweetest heart and gives me a lot of grace in a lot of ways. (I haven’t asked Hayley, but since she has moved away and I no longer have the ability to lock her away in a room- I hope she would agree with her sister.) 

Last month, it was one of those rare evenings (read: after 11 p.m. when I was still awake for whatever reason) where my junior sat down with me and wanted to talk about life. He started telling me about an assignment he was working on for AP Psych where they had to retell a familiar story from the villain’s point of view, making the argument that they were not in fact evil but misunderstood. He and his partner wrote about Scar from the Lion King. 

But in my mind, proving that my bachelor’s degree in psychology roots are strong, I’ve been working the same assignment for the evil step-mother in real life. She was a woman who was promised security through her marriage to Cinderella’s father. And that was ripped away in an instant when he died. She was a grieving widow. Whether the world wanted to acknowledge that or not, it’s not an easy role to be in. And when you have to add in the responsibility of caring for children on top of that, it becomes even harder.

I hope that I am not the only step-mother in the world that feels like there are days where the “evil” title fits a little more than others. Truthfully, blending families is hard. Parenting is hard. Step-parenting is hard. Teenagering is hard. There are difficult issues that have to be dealt with from an adult perspective as someone stepping into a parenting role for a child that is not yours- even when the biological parents are still in the picture. There are also difficult issues that have to be dealt with as a child who has someone new stepping into an authority role, especially when you no longer have your mom and dad. 

I’m not saying that every action the step-mother made was justifiable. It wouldn’t be a very good story if they were. But I can tell you there have been days and situations where I have been accused of playing favorites between children (from all sides), and my only defense and response to each child when they say “Well you let (insert name here) do this and now you won’t let me!”  is that they need to worry about themselves. There are always other factors at play (well he finished his homework after school, so it’s okay for him to be on his phone OR she already helped me put away towels and empty the dishwasher, so no, I’m not asking her to take out the trash).  

Specific to my role as a step-mom, as an adult with quite a bit of life experience, there are situations that I know are not in Kylie’s best interest or that I know will cause more harm than help in the long term. While there are days where she is open and receptive to my point of view on those issues, there are as many days where she does not agree with me AT ALL. We have had to work through a lot of sets of expectations together. Both hers and mine. 

While it can frustrate me in the moment, I do admire her ability to let me know EXACTLY how she feels about my expectations- good, bad or ugly. It is that ability that lets me know that no matter what tower she gets locked into, she is going to be okay. Her incredibly generous heart that her mama and dad instilled in her will help her build friendships with so many little mice and she will sew them tiny hats and shirts out of her last scrap of clothing, and they will help her escape. And if they can’t, she will break down the door herself because she can. 

Unfortunately, there is no fairy godmother who can wave a wand and change the story- at least for me during this particular chapter. It’s messy. I’m constantly sending up a prayer that someday, somehow, each kid will have an understanding of why I had to make the choices I did, although hopefully never through personal experience of being in the position I am in. 

On those days where I feel the “evil” title a little more, I hope and pray that Kylie knows that I am always acting in line with what I believe to be her very best interest, which is definitely where my actions break from the original evil step-mother. Through a lot of prayer and patience, we have both had to come to terms with these new roles of the story that we get to play out. 

And because tomorrow is Halloween (I swear I don’t wear it every day), please know that I will be wearing my princess crown while drinking out of my very favorite Cinderella coffee mug that reminds me most mornings, “Once a princess, always a princess.”