Postmodern Sibling Rivalry
Bear with me. It's complicated.
My daughter and my stepdaughter were thrown together by circumstance at a tender age. They’re united by the fact that their parents divorced and remarried, and now the Spacetropic household consists of a postmodern and mostly non-dysfunctional Brady Bunch helmed by two thirtysomething Gen-Xers with a wry sense of humor. Belly up to the table kids! We’re having chicken nuggets and a big helping of irony for dinner.
Except now the balance has shifted ever so slightly. My former spouse and her new husband just had a baby girl. We’re all on pretty good terms (to the point of babysitting on occasion) so congratulations and best wishes were the natural sentiment from my household.
But not my stepdaughter. The past nine months had been spent hoping for a boy. Another junior female anywhere in the picture is a potential rival for sisterly affection, and this new baby, even though she’s currently the size of a grande chimichanga, has the added credibility of being a “half” instead of a “step”. So my stepdaughter, age 7, fears the emotional estrangement of my daughter who is 10.
A week has passed since this picture was scrawled in a fit of fearful anger on our driveway following the news of this baby’s delivery. My stepdaughter's hot angry tears have been replaced by a grim acceptance, and even an acknowledgement that the infant is cute, and probably not about to do anything interesting any time soon. Their girlish world of book bags, movies, dress-ups, and inventive hairstyles isn’t about to be disrupted by interlopers. But with my daughter creeping up on early adolescence, we’re all in for some potentially rocky adjustments in the next couple of years. Little does the seven-year old suspect the magnitute of that looming change - and I'm dreading it myself.
If you see me on the driveway with a box of Crayola chalk it’s because I’m working through my emotions.