• Contact
• About
• Archives
• Home

Because you can never have too much of a good thing I have managed to stock up on extra parents.

Today is my Stepfather’s Birthday! Happy Birthday Pete!

I’m a little bit ashamed that I’ve talked about my turtles more than someone so dear to me, it’s not that my turtles are more interesting than my Stepfather, it’s just that….you know I have no idea why I haven’t yet to be honest. But I’m taking the opportunity to now.

I would love to be able to say that when Pete first came into our household (which had just been Mum and I for a year) it was wonderful and the air was always perfumed with roses. However it was more a time of conflict and stress. It was the first time for Mum and I to really fight, and I started to seriously consider moving out. As opposed to just running away to Nana’s as I had done when I was little.

Now I can look back at that time from a calm distance. And the important thing is that as unpleasant as it was - it was nothing to do with Pete himself. In fact I think he handled the situation well, considering also that I was a teenager going through my first University exams and generally being angry at everything. It was really the shock of suddenly having a man in the house. Since my parent’s divorced when I was a little kid there hadn’t been a man in the household for over 10 years (Mason doesn’t count as he was still a little drip). Mum had dated men but they hadn’t lived with us. That’s a big change - and a hard one when you are already experiencing many changes.

Obviously I got over that phase - but it took a while. It may have been coupled with the fact that I was ready to fly the coop, and try living out on my own. But I lived at home until I finished Uni and no-one killed each other (^^).

It was during this time that Pete and I started to learn about each other. I mean you gotta feel a bit sorry for the bloke - he hooks up with an attractive lovely woman and they fall in love - but then he’s landed with a girl-woman on the edge and a teenage boy who would spend 2 hours superglueing his hair into spikes to look like the Statue of Liberty.

Somehow he kept his cool. Maybe it’s to do with the stiff upper lip English thing.

I leave the family nest. Mason cuts his hair and goes into the Navy. Mum and Pete (after breathing many sighs of relief) settle down. I move to Sydney, then onto Tokyo.

It was in the first year of being in Tokyo when I got a call. Actually I think I made the call while I was waiting for some laundry to dry from a public telephone on the street. This turned out to be an important call. Mum and Pete told me that they were getting married and quitting their jobs to go live out past the black stump and work in an aboriginal community.

But the most important sentence of that call was when Pete said that he felt he could finally tell me that he loved me.

And I felt at that time that I had a new Dad to add to my parent collection.

Now of course we say “love you” on the phone all the time. But I won’t forget that first time.

Pete is not just the guy who is married to my Mum. He is a loving, supportive person who I feel lucky to be able to call my Stepfather. Even if he is getting a bit long in the tooth now and starting to fall to bits.

Have a secret drink for me on your Birthday Pete!

• How blessed you are with parents! What an abundance you have! Happy Birthday Pete! Hope to see you here in Tokyo!

  j-ster
  04/10/29 01:11 PM