Half Woman, Half Beast: Musings from the Evil Stepmother

I meant to write something deep this month. Really, I had all of these ideas about my daughter’s growing sense of her own family history, anecdotes about some of the sadness she’s been feeling. And believe me, in life, if not on the page, I’ve been very focused on the complicated and somewhat unexpected emotional fallout that T. has experienced since my ex-husband’s move back to the town where I live with my current family. But see, there’s something that keeps getting in my way when I try to write the deep essay.

It’s a vase—a yellow ceramic vase with a matte glaze and cream-colored swirls, designed and made by an artisan potter based in Massachusetts, purchased to fit the built-in bookcases in the living room of the first house I owned as an adult.

And a rug—a graphic Oriental with deep burgundy and bold blue accents that I bought a dozen years ago from one of the vendors in Washington DC’s Eastern Market on Capitol Hill, not far from the apartment where my parents lived when they were in their twenties, the first home of my life.

Oh, and a carved wooden box designed to hold betel nuts, purchased during an incredible vacation in Thailand, a marble ceiling light fixture from a little store near the Delaware River Gap. and two antique table lamps from a shop around the corner.

I picked all of these objects over the years and loved each one. Now they are all in the living room of my ex-husband’s new house, beautifully displayed and integrated along with his stunning new couch, brown leather chairs, impeccably painted walls and well-appointed throw pillows. And his wife. And, far more often than ever before in her eight years of life—my daughter.

I know there’s a deep essay in here somewhere if I could only focus on something that mattered—say, the wife and the daughter. But all I can focus on is the stuff. And, pardon my selfishness, but it’s my stuff. If George Carlin’s famous line about one person’s stuff being another person’s shit could only be true in this situation, then I would be running through my ex’s pristine new house right this minute with a wheelbarrow, carting away everything I ever chose.