When She First Called Me "Mom"

There are days when being a stepmom is the hardest thing I have ever chosen to do. Then there are days when it has very sweet rewards.

When I met my husband, I knew that he was given his standard post-deployment divorce (his words) and that he had a four year old daughter. I thought I knew what I was getting into and that I could handle all of the issues that go along with being a stepmom. I mean, we only had her for a weekend every month and my husband would occasionally call her to see how she was doing. It wasn't long and her mother agreed to let my stepdaughter stay with us for the whole summer. Suddenly, I realized that trying to be a mother to someone else's child was a going to be a very big challenge.

That was four years ago. So much has changed since then. When I first met my stepdaughter she played with dolls and could barely color in the lines. Now she is in third grade, doing geometry and struggling with homework and take home projects. I think it was over these things that we finally connected.

In September, my stepdaughter came to stay with us for a week long school break. We had spent all summer together, enjoying our new pool and she learned how to swim quite well. It was a nice continuation of the summer vacation until it was discovered that she had a rather large school project due after she got back to school. Neither she nor her mother had the project description sheet so we had to hunt down the teacher on her vacation. We finally got all of the information and all of the supplies and completed her project. She got a good grade on it and enjoyed the process. The next extended break with us was right before Thanksgiving. Another project loomed on the horizon and once again we came to her rescue and she enjoyed the process of coming up with the idea for the project and following through with the creative side.

I think that all of the work I put in to helping her with these projects, all of the time that I took explaining things to her and working to make sure everything was done correctly, finally paid off. Out of nowhere she started calling me "mom". It wasn't a big thing and no one said much about it, but my heart just soared. I made the connection I was trying to make for four years, and I proved to her that I love her like I love her younger sisters (my biological daughters). We will struggle, but we will be together in that struggle.