"Dear Lord, please put your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth."
Up until Thursday evening, I thought I'd dodge the bullet. Sunday night I emailed my niece and made sure she was coming to house-sit. Ooops. She'd already made plans to go camping with her boyfriend. My brother offered to drive down, get the dogs and take them home with him but since he lives three hours away, that seemed like asking way too much. He couldn't house-sit because he'd already agreed to spend Saturday on some pro-bono work removing fallen trees from the inside of a couple's home. Tom and I talked and agreed he and our kids, Jenny and Reggie, would drive to Indiana for the wedding while I stayed home with the dogs (kenneling three dogs for four days is way beyond our budget). I took Reggie aside and quietly asked him to keep an eye on Jenny at the wedding. It's been five years since their older sister bothered to so much as say hello to Jen and since Sheila can be a bitch I didn't want Jenny left undefended.Everything settled, Reggie went home and I made plans to exchange the dress I'd bought for the wedding for an expensive pair of running shoes. Of course there's more to this and to understand what happened at the wedding, you need a little background. Reggie is also my stepson, from Tom's second marriage. Tom and I married when Reggie was five and since he had sole custody of Reggie, I raised him and have always considered him mine. Not in the insane "God meant for me to give birth to this child but the Devil reached in and gave him to the wrong woman but then God fixed it" way that was the explanation a woman once gave me for kidnapping a child. But when you marry someone who has young kids, even adult kids, you're agreeing to a package deal. I married Tom; I emotionally adopted Reggie. End of story.
All through his teenage years we had problems with Reggie and I'll write more on that another time. For now I'll leave it at this: Reggie has a lot to make up for and he knows it, particularly with Jenny. So when he called Tuesday afternoon and said he'd house-sit and take care of the animals so that I could go to the wedding, he was doing something for me, yes, but mainly for Jenny. We have three cats and three dogs. All are Jenny's except my dog, Blue. Reggie really wants to fix his relationship with Jenny and earn back her trust. He was right that there's not much better way than to care for her animals. While I was still mulling his offer over, Tom called to let me know he'd also talked to Reggie and thought it was great I'd be attending the wedding after all.
Friday morning we headed out and seven hours later were in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It's a pretty town and the hotel was nice. The rehearsal dinner was lovely, Anna's parents were gracious and charming. I wince at the quiet talks that must have taken place during all of the planning that led to Tom's ex-wife, oldest son Russell and Sheila being seated at the opposite end from us of a very long table.
Awkward, humiliating, embarassing, sad, pathetic.....stupid. Pretty much sums it up. And it only got worse. This is Seth's second marriage and I didn't want the ugliness that occurred at his first wedding -- and at Russell's wedding -- to happen again. None of the brides seemed to have researched wedding etiquette for stepparents, assuming -- as I did and as I wanted -- that I could be ignored or, at best treated as just another guest. At Russell's wedding rehearsal, which I attended because Reggie and Jenny were in the wedding party, the minister surprised everyone by asking who would seat me. After a long painful silence, Seth (bless his sweet heart) jumped in and said he would. This time around Tom and I planned ahead, figuring that since we weren't included in the wedding party, we didn't have to attend the rehearsal and so could just show up at the church and sit down. When we got to the church and found a flower waiting for Tom as the father of the groom, but none for me, I thought I, at least, was in the clear. Until the Deacon in charge of seating learned Seth had a stepmother. I had to be properly seated, he told Anna's mother, and so we were all ushered into the library to wait. Seth, Russ, Tom, Jenny, Linda and me. Joy. They ignored us. We ignored them.
The wedding was beautiful. They always are. The reception was nice. Fun, as they're supposed to be. We tried to pretend the organizers hadn't seated Anna and Seth at a table in the middle with a family faction on each side. To the left, Russell, Sheila, Linda and her sister. To the right, me, Tom, Jenny and Seth's daughters. We ignored them, they ignored us. They even ignored Tom.
The ultimate stupidity? Back at the hotel I'd gone with Jenny for a late-night swim. Returning to our room we passed Sheila in the hallway. We all passed without saying a word.
