I could have titled this post, “How I spent my Christmas vacation.”

As newlyweds, we’re still figuring out how to handle holidays.  In the first two years of our marriage, we spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family.  This year we spent Thanksgiving with my family and Christmas with his.

That means Thanksgiving was spent in Atlanta with my mother.  We had a good time.  My mom and my cousin and her husband did most of the cooking, with my husband adding the ham.  I’m not usually called on to bring a dish because I’m not much of  a cook.   Things have only gotten worse since our marriage, since George is a much better cook than I am.

My mom is big on family meals so for Thanksgiving we ate in the dining room and we used the good dishes, or should I say, china. I was given the task of saying the Thanksgiving blessing.  Everybody laughed at me when I was done because I went on so long.  I laughed with them, but I stand by my prayer.  We had a lot to be thankful for and I didn’t leave anything out.  My cousin and I both survived breast cancer surgeries, my cousin’s husband had been hospitalized for something, my husband’s daughter had survived a second brain surgery, the rest of the family was thriving, and everybody was now in good health.  I think all that demanded a long Thanksgiving prayer.

The cousins spent the night at mom’s house along with us and we were treated by a visit from my brother from Kansas.  He was without his wife and three daughters this time, since he was on quick trip to take care of his aging father.  My mom was especially grateful to have both her kids under her room for a couple of days.  I should say all three of her kids, since my cousin is like a daughter to her.  We had a lot of fun, laughing and remembering old times, and being grateful for the lives we had.

My husband and I were teased a lot about not getting to places on time.  We have a bad reputation for not arriving at our scheduled time.  When we say we’re going to be somewhere on a certain day, our hosts joke that they’ll see us the following day.  It’s so bad that my mother and cousin debated telling us Thanksgiving dinner was going to be held the day before Thanksgiving.  It didn’t come to that though as we arrived in Atlanta on Wednesday just as we said we would.

We spent Christmas with my husband’s family.  To be honest, this trip came in the midst of some unwelcome long-distance family drama that I can’t rehash on this blog, but that I will certainly explore in a future book.  The good news is that God fixed our hearts so we could overcome the drama.

For our Christmas trip to Michigan, we didn’t tell anyone we were coming.  We just got in the car and headed out.  It’s about a 13-hour drive so we made our usual overnight stop at the Hampton Inn in Franklin, KY, about five hours from our home.  This spot is a regular for us when we’re traveling because we always use Hilton points since it’s only 7500 points a night.

After a restful night, we headed out for the remaining eight hours of our trip.  It went blessedly fast, with hubby doing most of the driving.  We arrived in Ann Arbor around 7:30pm.  Our first task was to check-in at the Sheraton Ann Arbor.  Again, we stayed there because we had hotel points.  Our 8-day stay cost us about $25/night.  We were able to get an upgraded room so we had plenty of space, along with a microwave, refrigerator and 42-inch flat panel television.  We were set for the week.

Our second task was to take care of a disabled car stranded on I-94.  No, it wasn’t our car.

Since this is getting to be a long post, I’ll tell the story of the car and the rest of our trip in a post later this week.

Actually, I’m not.  The truth is that my husband is a grandfather, which makes me the wife of a grandfather, not a grandmother.

I’ll bet some of you are wondering why I make the distinction.  Well, it’s because I’m too young to be a grandmother.  Not really.  I make the distinction because as someone married to a man with two adult children, a teenager, two grandchildren and an ex-wife, I’m careful to “stay in my lane.”

My husband’s grandchildren have a grandmother already and I have no desire to usurp that role, or dilute it by staking ownership to the title.  I’m not sure how I’d feel if the roles were reversed.  Would I want my grandchildren calling my ex-husband’s wife, “Grandma?”

At some point, we’re going to have to decide what name the grandchildren use for me, but we have a while for that since they’re still very young.  Maybe they could call me “Angel,” short for Angela.  I sorta like that.  I’m from the South so children addressing adults by their first name is a definite no-no.

What do you think?  How should my husband’s grandchildren address me?  Are any of you in a similar situation?  How have you handled it?

In sickness and in health

I took those words to heart as I contemplated getting married at age 50.  It didn’t take much to figure out that while my hubby and I had a number of good years ahead us, we had probably lived more days than we were going to live.  So when I married my husband, I was well aware that I could become his caretaker and I was willing to take that risk, and if it came to it, that responsibility.  You see, his medicine cabinet contains a lot more prescriptions than mine and he’s two years older so I figured if one of us became ill, it would be him.  Guess what?   He didn’t become ill; I did.  About three months before our first anniversary, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Let that sink in:  Three months before our first anniversary, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

As you can imagine, the honeymoon phase of our marriage turned abruptly into the hospital phase.  A cancer diagnosis means tests, tests and more tests.  It means surgeries — first for the biopsy and then for the cancer removal.  It means treatments — months of chemo followed by months of radiation.  To give you an idea of how long the process lasted, we celebrated our second anniversary a couple of weeks after my radiation treatments ended, but while I still was recovering from them.  That gives you some idea of what the year has been like for us.

I have to give my husband credit and praise for the care he’s taken of me—physically, emotionally, and spiritually–over the last year.  I’ve said to him more than once —  “You didn’t sign up for this, did you?”  And his answer is always, “Sign up for what?  You’re my wife and we take care of each other.”  Such simple words, but you’ll never know how much they’ve meant to me.  Or how much he means to me.  It’s one thing to love somebody when everything is going well; it’s another to love them through life’s challenges.

I know this is strange to say, but I think we’ve grown closer during the past year.  For many years, I’ve worn my independence as a banner.  I didn’t need a man to complete me.  Through this past year, I’ve learned that it’s real nice to have somebody to lean on when your own personal strength seems to be waning.  I learned what it means to work together, to sacrifice for each other, to compromise for the greater good, and to love in practical ways.  Overall, I think I learned what it means to be a wife, a life partner.

I know some of you are saying, “Well, God was with you.”  And, yes, He was and still is.   If I weren’t married, I still wouldn’t be alone; I’m not denying that truth.  What I’m saying is that God was gracious enough to send me someone to go through this time with me.  I thank Him for sending George to me.

This has not been a year of sadness for us though.  I think it has made us both more grateful that we found each other.  And we’ve had some fun memories that we often share with a laugh.  Our first visit to wig shop is one of them.  The owner gave me this Farrah Fawcett thing and told me I looked gorgeous.  Behind her, my husband was vigorously shaking his head, his eyes wide with alarm.  Our attempt to make our own wig out of my sisterlocks is another fun memory.  George went out and bought yarn and needles and we sat down to a pile of what seemed to be hundreds and hundreds of locks.  We looked at the piles, looked at each other, shook our heads, and promptly gave up on the that idea.  Then after we finally settled on a wig, my husband, eyes sparkling, looked at me and said, “I’ve got a new wife.”  Something tells me I’ll be wearing wigs every now and then even after my hair comes back.

I’m now officially a cancer survivor, but hospitals and tests are still a part of our future.  And testing needs to be a part of your life or the lives of people you know and love.  Early detection is important so get those mammograms.

As I close this post, I want to share a Breast Cancer Love Letter with you. It’s written by a survivor to the women she loves.  I share it with you because I love you.

I had planned to re-start the Newlywed at 50 series talking about our second anniversary, but something else is on my heart.  I want to talk about what it means to fall in love with someone who has children.  For the record, I don’t have children of my own.  The closest I’ve come are my nieces, whom I love dearly. But something happened in my heart when I fell in love with George: I fell in love with his kids.

I’m not just saying this. It was actually something that I felt in my heart before I met them, before I got to know them.  I loved them because he loved them.  I wanted, and still want, only the best for the them.  There was, and still is, a ready-made space in my heart for them.

But loving step-children is complicated because there is another parent in the picture.  Believe it or not, there was a place in my heart for her, too.  I was mature enough to realize that because they had kids together, my husband’s ex- would always have a place in our lives, and I had accepted that and her.

So I had envisioned this big, happy blended family.  As you’ve probably guessed, we’re not there yet. The good news is that we’re making progress.

I’m building relationships with husband’s children, but there are challenges and landmines aplenty. The most important thing I’ve learned in the process is that in some way they will always see me as taking a part of their father. I want to say that’s not true, but it is.

Even though my husband had been divorced almost 10 years when I met him, my entrance into his life disturbed the ebb and flow of his relationships with his children. Our lives changed when we got married and so did theirs. Believe me, adjusting to change is not easy.

There are times when I feel I have to bottle up the love I have for my husband’s kids because I don’t know how to show it or feel my attempts to show it will be received as inappropriate. So I love through my husband. I support him as he supports them. We plan to spend time with them together and we also plan for him to spend time with them without me. We owe that much to them.

I’m sensitive, my husband says overly sensitive, to his kids because I was raised by a single mother. I never want to do anything to come between him and them because I know how valuable that relationship is to a child’s development.

My hat goes off to mothers who have seen the fathers of their children re-marry. And my hat goes off to the women, like me, who have married them. Even though we don’t always acknowledge it, our lives will be intertwined for a very long time.

I know I’m not alone in what I’m experiencing so let me hear from you.

By the way, my husband’s kids were 14, 20, and 23 when we married. When you’re my age, everyone under 30 is a kid.

I was 50 and he was 52.  It was love at first bifocal.

Yes, my Newlywed at 50 (N@50) posts are back!  I had to stop posting for a while because things were getting a bit too personal.  In telling the story of my first marriage at age 50 I found myself telling other people’s stories as well.  That’s what happens when your husband has an ex-wife and children and you are much too close to your mother and brother.  Well, I realized that some stories were not mine to tell and it was too difficult to figure out what not to write.  That all changed when my husband and I saw his cousin and her daughters on Jerry Springer.  Yes, Jerry Springer, and even though there is a youtube video of the segment I refuse to link to it.  Let’s just say my blog posts don’t come anywhere close to what we saw on Jerry Springer so N@5o is back on.

Another reason that N@50 is back on is because my husband and I celebrate our second anniversary next week.  Yes, that means I’m now 52, but don’t tell anybody.  We’ve had a year of celebrations and challenges.  While I couldn’t share them with you while we were experiencing them, I look forward to sharing them with you now.

In my first post of the re-started series, which will be up on October 20, I write about how my husband earned his hero status during the first year of our marriage.  Stay tuned!

You can catch up on the original N@50 posts HERE.