Burnt Edges

One would think a thirtyyear- old would pause to explore the pros and cons of a life-altering decision. It never occurred to me to investigate the challenges of marrying the father of four teenagers.

After all, kids usually stay with their mothers. Their visits, perhaps twice a month, would not interfere with the romantic illusion I had carefully built around marital bliss.

That illusion cracked the day the male child decided to live with us instead of his mom.

How much disruption could a thirteen-year-old boy cause? I saw no problem, aside from the minor adjustment of wearing clothing while wandering the house in the evenings. A small price to pay for love and a crash course in adolescent hormones. Covering my body would not be life-changing. Right?

I considered myself flexible. As a middle child, adaptation was my specialty.

We moved into our small, actually tiny, one-bathroom house, purchased before we realized our family would be a trio. That was when another crack appeared. This boy could be grumpy, often surly, and always hungry.

Unfortunately, I had skipped home economics in high school. I never learned how to turn on a stove, what belonged on it, or how to plan a meal beyond opening a package.

I could boil an egg. If pressed, I could scramble one, convinced I had entered an Olympic event.

Before this marriage, my diet consisted of baloney and cheese sandwiches, hot dogs boiled and topped with pineapple and cottage cheese, or peanut butter on white bread and declared sufficient.

It was the 1970s. Microwaves were not part of my vocabulary. Cutting up a raw chicken had never crossed my mind. Browning hamburger meat sounded ambitious.

I was a novice in the kitchen but smart enough to know I needed immediate help. A friend raising five sons became my food encyclopedia. She instructed me on how much meat to buy, which aisle held Hamburger Helper, and how many gallons of milk would last, at best, two days.

Armed with confidence, I entered my beautifully equipped kitchen, complete with a pink stove and matching pink refrigerator from a used appliance store. I prepared my first official meal: beef Hamburger Helper and two gallons of milk chilling in the fridge.

She suggested iceberg lettuce, was there any other kind, and a tomato for color. Thus began my journey into fine dining.

Over the next eleven years, I learned to prepare turkey and dressing for ten adults and three children, freeze vats of stew, pinto beans, and spaghetti sauce, and cut up a chicken without knowing whether a leg or breast was frying in the pan.

My advice to anyone considering step-parenting is simple. Marry someone whose children are over twenty-one and live in another city.

More tales to come from life among four teenagers. Another slice of life—burnt edges and all. FC Record / 2 c ... 3.53'