It's a diluted label - - kids' father's girlfriend.
Over the course of the week, their Mom will have them for four days. We’ll get them for three. It alternates every other weekend. In that 3 days, stories will be listened to, backs will be rubbed, problems and arguments will be worked out, chores will be enforced, drives to soccer games and dance classes will be given, meals will be prepped, bath times will take place, and hello and goodbye hugs will happen. There will be moments with smiles and intimacy and laughter.
My boyfriend is a busy parent in a household with one parent. He does the work. He earns the paycheck. He does the driving and cooking. And I share - - in this life, in this home, in helping to foster happiness. Is it the same as parenthood? As what he does? Have I been there the nights in the emergency room? Is someone calling for me from overnight camp? Did I carry them around for nine months? Do they carry my genetics? Can I tell stories of how hard it was when they were toddlers? How much love I felt when they were born? Do I wake up at 5 am? No.
I’m not the parent. Not even close. But I am here, I love them, and I have a role.
Being the girlfriend is a lot less work than being the parent. It also doesn’t have the reward that the hard work of parenting brings. With grace, understanding, empathy, and unwavering love, you take the furthest back seat at every event. You calmly and maturely listen to endless tales of their mother. You accept and embrace your needs as second at all times. You sacrifice your privacy. You work through feelings of jealousy that no one wants to admit - - that we’re ashamed to admit.
There are the female neighbors that want to save the sweet, sympathetic, single man down the street disappointed by your arrival. There are the Moms that hate to know that, should they get divorced, an attractive, intelligent, childless woman could be waiting for their husbands and ready to love their kids. There are the colleagues with kids who dismiss your attempts to relate to lifestyles with soccer practice. There are your single friends who see a changing, less attractive, identity. You’re a dream wrecker. You’re a threat. You’re a fad. You’re unrelatable. They wait to see if it ends. They wait to see you get fed up or tired or selfish.
What they don’t do is wait to see if you’re real.
Meeting Chris’s kids was an arranged marriage of sorts. A blind commitment. I knew from meeting my own parents’ significant others, and watching them enter and leave my life, how critical is was to do right by these two lives I hadn’t even met. And stay in their lives with some type of longevity.
Chris’s kids were all things 8 and 10 year old kids are - - curious and openminded and nonjudgmental. As children, they have the instinct to anticipate with hope. The instinct to know an adult that their Dad loves has the potential to love them, too. The instinct to be themselves and observe. And it’s perfect. What they taught me was that all I had to do was be openminded and be myself, too. We all want the same thing - - for things to be happy and right.
The attraction I felt the day I met them has grown and grown. Every time there is a first - - a hug, a confidance, a cuddle on the couch, the welcome signs they made when I moved in, their kind words about me to their grandmother, the way they listen, the way they ask questions, their smiles, their comfort, their trust - - it’s a bit of proof that their love is growing, too.
It’s exactly the kind of love it should be - - not the love for a Mom. Not the love for an adult friend. The love for a woman who shares in their sense of home, who shares in the protection of their well being, who shares in the admiration and wonder of their beings. A woman who knows them and loves them for just who they are. They love me as that person.
To them, I’m Jennifer. Jennifer who’s nice. Jennifer who loves them and their Dad. And that’s all that matters.