The signs that point us toward blended
A few years back, the movie Starman popped up on Netflix, which I remembered seeing a bunch of times as a kid and thought Dan would probably like. The final scene takes place in a huge meteor crater out in the middle of some desert.
"I want to know where that crater is," I said to Dan. "I’ve always wanted to see it in person."
Dan said, “Oh sure, we can do that! We’ve driven past it a bunch of times.”
Ummm what?? Surely I would've noticed driving right past such an iconic landmark, especially one I'd wanted to see for nearly my entire life. But apparently, nope! I'd missed it. Missed the "Meteor Crater ahead!" sign each and every time we drove to Tucson to visit my folks, which we did just about every 3-day weekend the entire decade we lived in Vegas. Missed the actual turnoff to the crater every time we drove to Minnesota for summer vacation, which we did nearly every summer.
So the next time we traveled that way, we did stop. And as irritated as I was with myself for having missed out on that opportunity for the years and years I'd lived practically around the corner, finally seeing that crater was everything I wanted it to be.
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Missing all the blended family signs
I remembered that story this past weekend, as Dan & I drove the familiar route from Las Vegas to Tucson once again and I caught sight of that "Meteor Crater ahead!" sign. Small and easy to miss, if you don't know what you're looking for.
Like how I missed out on years of blended family life looking for that "blended" feeling, never realizing we were already there.
I spent years frustrated that our stepfamily didn't feel like I thought a family should feel. I kept thinking, if only we didn't have all this back-and-forth shit with SD all the damn time. If only there weren't all this conflict. Then we'd feel like a family.
When Dan's lengthy custody battle ended in a drastic visitation reduction from 50/50 to 80/20 long-distance, I was sure our limited time with SD would destroy whatever shaky foundation we'd managed to build up to that point. There was no way we could feel like a real family now. On 80/20?? When we'd struggled connecting with each other on 50/50? Forget it.
Except... spending less time together didn't feel any different. If anything, I appreciated our time together even more. And if you'd asked me a year before, while still on 50/50, whether we felt like a "real" family, I'd have said nope, no way, definitely not. Yet on 80/20, I didn't feel like we weren't a real family.
Almost as if we'd been a family the whole time.
Almost as if I'd missed all the evidence pointing the way there and I just hadn't noticed. Small signs. Easy to miss, if you don't know what you're looking for.
Our vision for blending a family
I had this picture in my head that any meteor crater that spectacular must surely exist far out of my reach. Somewhere halfway across the world, maybe, accessible only by parachute or camel. That idea became so firmly fixed that I never once researched where that crater was or how to get there. I just assumed my dream of seeing it IRL was exactly that: a pipe dream.
So even if I'd noticed the turnoff on our dozens and dozens of road trips, I'd never have connected that brown, unassuming sign with the massive crater I'd always wanted to see. I'd already written it off as impossible anyway.
We carry a vision of the family we hope to have someday with us all the time, like a neon billboard. And a stepfamily doesn't look or act or feel anything like that, so we keep looking. We skip over all the signs that point toward us being a family because we're so convinced otherwise. This can't be my family. It's too messy. Too complicated. Too frustrating. Too impossible.
It's a lot of work recognizing that our everyday stepfamily life, which bears no resemblance to the family we always thought we'd have, is a really-for-real family. We're so demoralized by all the evidence that seems to point out all the hundreds of ways we're not a family that we skip right over those humble signs that... well, maybe we are. Maybe "family" isn't as impossible a goal as we thought. Maybe it's right there, practically around the corner. Maybe it's been there this whole time.
Easy to miss, when you don't know what you're looking for.
