Just shy of 10 years ago now, I was coming to the realization that I was going to become a stepmom.
Frankly the idea scared me a little bit. It was permanent, full of new responsibility and notoriously tricky.
Think about it -- if you were playing a game of word association, what automatically leaps out of people's mouths after the word stepmother? That's right. Evil.
Just the fact that evil stepmoms are such a constant in TV, movies and other media gives a little glimpse into the kind of spotlight that stepparents are under in the early stage, because, c'mon, does the same moniker go for moms? Of course not. And don't even get me started about how little it takes to qualify as a "good dad."
So there was pressure from the start.
Then there's the other natural part -- the extra attention you get from your budding stepkiddo's mom, her family and her friends. Call it scrutiny or whatever you want, but from the time it begins until the time it plateaus or drops off, it feels like being under a microscope.
I understood the curiosity. If someone's going to be an important part of an 8-year-old's life and be there when you're not, you're going to want to know as much about them as you possibly can. That didn't bother me too much. What did vex me was working out what my role was in my stepkid's life.
Naming it, once I married my husband, was the easy part.
You've got a few choices -- stepmom, which comes with the aforementioned baggage. And Bonus Mom, which I felt implied a swing too far in the other direction, like wearing coordinating jerseys and sitting side by side at games, tournaments and awards ceremonies with my husband's ex-wife and her husband.
Or you could do what we did. My stepson has always simply called me by my first name and vice versa.
At first, the role weighed on my mind because my stepson already had a mom and a dad. What could he possibly need from me? What was I to him, exactly?
The answer has come slowly over the years, built through thousands of interactions that eventually added up to something hard to name until finally I've realized it doesn't need one.
I eventually realized that there were so many adults in my life that weren't parents or stepparents to me, but wound up being wildly influential anyway.
There was Corinna, the mom of my childhood best friend. It's hard to sum up all the many things she did for me, but among them was throwing me a belated kindergarten graduation party when my family didn't bring me to the school ceremony and later teaching me to speed read after school in preparation for the many college entrance exams I'd face.
There was Angie, who took me to see plays at the local college and spent hours talking with me about books and prayer and God.
There was Dodie, who would pick me up on the weekend and take me antiquing, who taught me to send food back if it wasn't right and reminded me that no job on earth was worth living my life completely stressed out.
And there was Juanitta, my first love's mom, who was there for everything -- good and bad. I knew I could call her if I was in real trouble, or even if I was just feeling lost.
I still don't know what my role in my high school senior stepson's life is exactly, but it matters less now that there have been many times I've gotten to be there for him when he needed someone or something. Because whatever it is, I know it's something.