My Parents are Getting Married!

Ok, so my biological parents were married in 1974. March of 1974. As I arrived in summer 1974, you can see that time was of the essence in getting them hitched, yes? Well, they then divorced in 1986. (I've got a post brewing about my relationship with my dad, but this is not the post for that. My dad got remarried about five seconds after the divorce was finalized and I was not told until after the fact and I was not invited. Classy guy, my father. But I digress, and again, this is not the post to deal with him.)

Now my mom and my stepdad met around the time that the divorce was finalized. They met because she parked in the parking lot where he worked. He would see her every day, and I guess he liked what he saw, and so he checked around to see what her status was with her friends from her job. (Remember: my stepdad is an immigrant. And people can be mean to immigrants, so it made sense he'd do some legwork on the front end of things. Oh, and he totally wasn't into the idea of getting involved with some woman who had baby-daddy-drama or rotten kids. He had never been married, and as far as I can tell, he had decided that he wouldn't marry at some point in his 20s.) But so, to make a long story short, my mom said she'd go out with him.

[Aside: if you wonder from whence Dr. Crazy gets some of her craziness, Dr. Crazy's mom asked the following oh-so-attractive-to-one's-date questions on her first date with him: 1) are you a United States citizen? 2) are you a Christian? It's a wonder they've been together 20 years with that kind of beginning, I think.]

But so anyway, to make a long story short, something with the two of them clicked, and they've been together ever since. Well, there was a breakup scare when I was 14 (my mom and I moved, and a stressed out Crazy's Mom is kind of a shrew, and my stepdad isn't going to be walked over by a bitchy woman, and so he almost ended it. But he missed me (or so he says - I think he missed her, too, but I was a good excuse). But that's ok, I'll take the credit. And so I am responsible for their relationship! I am awesome!

At any rate, the thing that is so great about him is that when he first started dating my mom and then when he moved in with us (just sort of by osmosis - there was no grand moving in day - just he sort of slowly imbedded himself in our lives) he didn't try to boss me around or to bribe me or to whatever. He never tried to take the place of my father, but at the same time he's been more of a father to me for the past 20 years than my biological father has. All through high school, we would fight about politics and stuff going on in the news, and I rebelled against him. (It turns out, he's probably the most well informed person I've ever seen about such things, but when you're 15 and a passionate girl, political fights with any authority figure devolve into screaming matches and tears - yes, I cried all the time when I talked to him about the politics. Now it turns out we agree on a bunch of things, though whether that was me changing him or him changing me I'm not sure.) He knows what's going on in my life; he yells at me if I don't "do my duty" and call once a week (at minimum). He's the one who moved me to grad school; he's the one who told my mom that they could manage to help me financially during grad school. He's been at all of my graduations; he's in the acknowledgments of my dissertation. He's the one who was there in October 2003 for both my mom and for me when my grandmother died. I guess what I'm saying is that my stepdad has been my father for a really long time.

So it's exciting that he's finally going to be my mother's husband - even if it's taken them 20 years to get there.

(Incidentally, they are both totally freaked out and they claim they're doing it so that my mom can put him on her health insurance. My mom keeps worrying that he doesn't really want to do it, but then she keeps saying that she doesn't believe it's going to happen and she had never really thought about doing it... They're both pretty funny, I've got to say. I wish I could be there, but I think they'd both be embarassed - I'm the only person they've told, and they're just going to quietly go to the Justice of the Peace. It'll be interesting to see how they tell The Family. Oh, and I've not been calling back my one Real Life Non-Academic Friend who reads this blog because I'm afraid I'll tell her about it and I know there's no way that she could keep it inside and not spill the beans to her sisters if she knew - just as I couldn't not tell her if I talked to her now that I know - so A., if you're reading this (on Monday, as she does not do internet at home, which is why this post is safe), I'm sorry I've not called but the deed will be done by tomorrow afternoon, so I can call you after it's official!)