Like a troupe of sincere amateur actors performing a low-budget homage to MI:III, we dropped my step-children at their mother's house. We performed a seat-switch two miles outside Alajuela (the city, not the province), me taking the most obscure seat in the middle back, with the step-daughter on my right and the step-son and the nephew on my left. Brother-in-law and Sister-in-law took the front seats.
The step-daughter expected me to cry again, and I would have, but she put her hand on my arm. That little gesture spoke the whole phrase book. "I'll miss you" Yo te faltare, "Don't cry" No llora , "Don't forget me" No me olvida . Then the scene that took place knocked the tears right out of my eyes.
We stopped five houses down from the house in the urbanisacion, behind a gold VW Jetta. While the children and my brother-in-law strategized over delicate posessions, umbrellas and invisibility, my sister-in-law turned to me and I think she said, "The mother doesn't like us and she doesn't know you married their Papi." She spoke so fast. Whether it was anger, impatience, or urgency that charged her sentence, or a combination of the three, I wouldn't know. When the children poked their heads back into the car to say good bye, I only had enough breath to tell each one "Te quiero mucho" with un abrazo y un beso.
My brother-in-law drove to the top of the street to turn. I waved, and the children knocking on the door turned awkwardly. I think my sister-in-law then said, "She won't let them in until we're gone." I blinked several times. It's a look the children find hysterical, especially when I've just been asked something fairly simple and have to take five minutes to puzzle out the question and then attack the answer. Then I started to laugh. A crazy laugh.
The current pop-psychology trend apparently hasn't been translated into Spanish, the trend that uses words like co-parenting and atmosphere of courtesy and involves concepts such as putting the needs of the children first and creating a family in which children do not have to choose sides. The feelings here burn hot and angry; the mother nurses her sense of wrongedness and the family cherishes a righteous indignation. The children maintain a blinking silence.
So when shall we tell the mother of my step-children that they have a step-mother? Each day that she isn't told becomes another day closer to my Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary. Shall we tell her then? Each day brings the children closer to legal adulthood, when they make their own decisions and the mother has no power. Shall we tell her then? Each day, tragically, brings the inevitability of a death in the family closer, closer. Shall we wait and at the cementario, tell her then?
I feel a special pity for the mother of my step-children. Here I sit, with all the time and luxury in the world to muse over the shortcomings of the arrangement, to mock her if I choose, and judge her life and choices, and revel in my virtue that I choose only to dislike the things that hurt the children. She doesn't know I exist and so she doesn't have that pleasure. Wouldn't she love to speak slightingly of my extra weight? She might find some shrewishness in me to cackle over. She might find my childless situation as sneer-worthy as I find other situations. I wouldn't know what she might find, and I would never know. She could shred me to my face and if I chose not to make the effort, I wouldn't understand. I don't speak enough Spanish.
Hard to draw a conclusion when there is no resolution. The comfort I draw is that despite the deceit and obfuscation, these are two good kids. My step-son has a good heart, and my step-daughter is a wonderful girl. At ten and twelve, they show more class than the rest of us put together.