A Blessing

I turned thirteen my first birthday without my mom. It was also my first birthday with a stepmom. Pam and her children had joined our household in the fall, and the holidays came on fast. The course of one year had turned everything familiar foreign. After so many changes—a new parent, four new siblings, a different bedroom, a drastic haircut, that gaping crater in the center of my world—turning thirteen was just one more thing that didn’t feel like me.

My friend Angie invited me over that afternoon, so I trudged through the snow wearing the bright green Christmas coat I had opened the day before. I inspected the coat as I walked, wondering if Angie would find it as cute as I did.

Angie’s mom let me in and I pushed open her bedroom door to shouts of “Surprise!” and “Happy birthday!” Pam was inside, along with a small gathering of my friends, whom she had called together for the occasion. They smiled at me, waiting for my reaction.

I knew surprise parties were meant to be fun. But all I felt was foolish. And fooled. Were my friends secretly annoyed at being forced into this? With all eyes on me I felt strangely left out.

“I hate surprises,” I muttered. As I said the words I found they were true, so I said them again in an effort to be known. “I hate surprises.”

I caught the flicker of hurt in Pam’s eyes, and I wished I hadn’t said it.

Time passed, and nature took pity on me. It held off two whole years after my mom’s death before thrusting me into official womanhood. When the wondrous moment finally arrived in April of eighth grade, I thought I was prepared. After all, stashed deep under my bed was a box of generic brand “sanitary napkins” that my grandma had gifted me two years earlier. But among several unwelcome discoveries was the realization that one box would not last long. I would be forced to communicate.

When the next month rolled around and the situation became dire, I considered walking the mile and a half to the grocery store and making my own purchase. But that would require money I didn’t have, so I slowly approached the open door of the master bathroom, where Pam was readying herself to run errands. And still I stalled, making small talk, hovering nervously. At the last possible moment, when she was heading out the bedroom door toward the listening ears of hundreds of younger siblings, I pushed the words out. “I need maxi pads.”

Of course she made me repeat myself. And then, having placed my order, I turned to run. But Pam stopped me with a big smile, a hug, and an enlightening trip down the feminine supplies aisle at Allen’s Super Save. The mortification was no match for the relief I felt as I sat in the minivan on the way home with that precious plastic bag on my lap.

When I turned sixteen, I couldn’t tolerate one more moment of life without a driver’s license, so Pam spent the day after Christmas helping me track down my driver’s ed coach at his house (he was wearing plaid pajama bottoms) so I could get the one last signature I needed. Then she drove me to the DMV and waited while I answered written questions about speed limits and passing lanes. When I walked back to her chair she looked up expectantly, then whooped when I gave the thumbs-up. She let me drive home.

Then, thirteen years in, when I was safely raised and living on my own, Pam’s marriage to my father ended. I suppose she could have walked away, gently fading out of our lives as the years picked up speed. But because we knew her, we felt no fear of such a thing. She simply kept on caring, and our blended family kept on feeling like a family.

One December night, another thirteen years later, Pam gathered and fed eighteen of her grandchildren in her home while their parents—eleven siblings and spouses—drove off in the darkness to stand together next to the casket that held their father. As we adult children greeted and murmured, blinked and kept breathing, Pam helped little hands glue photos of Grandpa on glittery ornaments to be wrapped and hidden under trees at home. My children’s gift was the last one I opened that Christmas morning, as the snow fell fresh and my father’s face was all I could see. It was my favorite.

I turned thirty-nine my first birthday without my dad. The day always drifts in like an exhale, the seasonal fervor having peaked and dropped suddenly away, leaving me to add another number to my age as the world burrows in to recover. And this year, as I stood among the remnants of excitement still strewn across the floor, I wondered what kind of me I would be now that both of the people who had given me life were no longer in it.

Then came a knock on the door. It was Pam, shaking snow off her shoes and greeting my children, who rushed to welcome her. She had contacted my husband and offered to stop by on her way home from Christmas in Idaho—a detour of sixty snowy miles in her hours-long drive—so she could babysit while we went on a birthday date. Jeremy and I gladly fled the scene and returned hours later to a Harry Potter themed cake and a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” by three gleeful children.

Later that night, my three-year-old daughter announced, “I had really fun with Grandma Pam.”

“She’s so nice, huh?” I said.

“Yep. She loves me!” she sang as she danced away.

And I knew it was true.