Printer Friendly

Email This Page

Leave a Comment

Read Comments (0)

Sign Up!

“Wow, those electronic games really zone them out, don’t they,” Rob, my wife’s ex-husband says.

We’re having a conversation in my kitchen, while Josh and Ben ‘zone out’ on the couch in the next room, Nintendo Game Cube controllers in hand. He’s here picking up for his two days: the transferring process from one ex to the other will commence shortly.

“I know,” I reply, “Isn’t it cool?”

Rob looks at me, horrified. He doesn’t fully realize that I’m only half serious. I don’t want to see them turn into vacant, button-stabbing zombies either, however this has been the first break we’ve had from the screaming, crashing, fighting, pounding and general malaise that accompanies any activity in our house except a) sleeping or b) sitting on the couch zoning out to electronics. The one exception is whenever they start fighting over the actual electronic game they happen to be playing, but I’ve quickly learned that I can quell this more easily than most altercations by simply threatening to turn the sucker off – the notion of their Madden 2003 football season vaporizing into the ether seeks to trump any act of willful violence each might have in mind for the other, although the reliability of this technique may soon change.

It’s easy for me to take the disciplinary high road, here at the House of Rules, home to the boys five nights out of seven per Elizabeth and Rob’s divorce arrangement; its the mundane, boring house, where dinner and bedtime occur on-time, without fail, even if it means killing ourselves to do so.

Rob and I have become cordial and friendly in the years we’ve now known each other (I’ve even forgiven the buddies of his that invented my nickname, ‘Wheels’); we share family events like the kid’s birthdays, even Thanksgiving last year. We’ve integrated, at least to a greater degree than most.

But there still exists a palpable barrier between our house, the seemingly well-ordered, strictly governed house of primary residence and Rob’s mythical Man Cave, the House of Fun, the land of the negotiable bedtime, abundant snacks, flexible candy limits; a non-stop testosterone celebration of pull-my-finger jokes and ‘don’t tell your mother’ confidences. Every week, 48 hours of ‘it’s all about you guys’.

I don’t know this first hand. I can only assume, since Elizabeth and I will spend the next 48 hours upon their return repairing boundaries and reinforcing house rules that seem all but forgotten. Not to mention hearing about how lame our house is.

The rational part of me knows this is patently absurd, the notion that while the boys are on the other side of the curtain at the ex’s, that chaos abounds and lawlessness rules; however it plays right into the emotional trap that many of us steps fall into. We’ve made a covenant with ourselves and our new found loved ones that we’ll provide anything and everything to our step children that any parent would, we read books, articles and blogs, even attend lectures from parenting gurus – all to be the absolute best we can be. Yet when the natural parent steps in to take their rightful rotation, we must defer, and give them up to a parenting style that is at least somewhat, if not radically different than our own.

Different, but not necessarily wrong.

And we are okay with that – we have no choice.

A half hour later, we’ve somehow managed to break them free from the spell of electronic gaming, and all three are bounding out the side door, off once again to the Man Cave. I once again remind myself that this is one of the absolutes I will never be able to control. And I am okay with that.