To a Stepmother at Christmas Time

How old was I when I met her – five? six? I was sitting on the floor of the living room in my Dad’s “river house”-the tiny 2-bedroom condo on the bank of the Bow river that he rented when he and my mom split up-this I remember. Sometimes when the river was swollen, water would seep across the lawn and flood the kitchen and living room, and my brother and I wouldn’t be able to jump on the trampoline outside, which was our favorite thing to do. I must have been about 6. She was probably about 26 or 27. My dad was having a party and wanted to introduce me to her, I remember them walking into the living room together. It was very simple, “Brianna, this is Heather”. He didn’t explain that he was in love with her or how they had met or the hundreds of ways she was going to shape me into the person I am today. Just an introduction, and then he left her with me.

Heather didn’t have a lot of experience with kids – in fact, she later confessed to me that I was the first kid she ever really got to know. But instead of asking me where I went to school or what my favorite colour was, she looked at me, started laughing, and threw a blanket over my head. I started laughing too. It took me another three weeks to figure out that she was dad’s girlfriend, and probably a year after that to understand exactly what this meant. In the meantime, we welcomed her into our peculiar, disjointed little family.

Heather was my step-mom for the next 15 years. She taught me about alcohol, took me to see dirty movies (by accident) when I was far too young for them, encouraged me to take major fashion risks, and never, not once, lost faith in me. Faith in my ability to figure it out. No matter what, I felt that Heather was always on my side, that she ‘got’ me. Example: when I was about ten, I started to feel really anxious about my life. I was mad at my mom, mad at my teacher, mad at my soccer coach, and mad at myself. I was awkward and lanky and not at all cool, and bewildered by how my life was changing. Instead of lecturing me, Heather decided that we should go for a drive. She drove me an hour out of Calgary into the countryside, steered the Jeep into a cornfield, and parked. Then, she told me to scream as loud as I wanted, say whatever I wanted, and get as mad as I could at whoever upset me. At first I was reluctant, but them we started to scream together. I got out of the car and yelled at the top of my lungs, “I f***ing hate you. I hate everything. Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop”. I remember pulling corn stalks out of the ground and throwing them, whipping them against the dirt. I remember crying harder than I had ever cried before, or since. I had so much sadness inside of me that no one had ever been able to release before that cornfield. Somehow, Heather knew.

She had two children with my dad – the complete and absolute loves of my life, Jessica and Hannah, a family again for me. This year though, after years and years of fighting and uncertainity, my dad and Heather decided to divorce. It was probably best for everyone, but I feel like my heart has been ripped into pieces and scattered across the country. She’s living in Calgary with the girls now and I miss them terribly. My family now consists of my mom, living alone in Coquitlam, my brother, living with his girlfriend in North Van, my dad, living alone in Victoria and my sisters and step-mom (ex-step-mom?) living in Calgary. I don’t know how to reconcile this and sometimes I think it’s ruining me. All I want is to be home, to have one place that is home, to be together, for people to love each other. It was sobering for me, a moment when I finally felt as though I had grown up, when I realized that I’m too small to make this happen. I’ve been trying for so long to foster this love and I just can’t find it. People just keep breaking off. I don’t know how much more of me there is to give before I’ve loved as much as I can, and finally need something back.