For the next couple of months, I will be blogging about stepmother-y things and sharing tips from my book From Zero to Four Kids in Thirty Seconds. This posting is an exerpt from my book–it’s how I unwittingly became a stepmother. You see….
I did not plan to become a stepmother.
In fact, as a financially secure single woman with no obligations and a thirst for adventure, the last thing I needed was a serious entanglement with a guy — let alone an older divorced guy with four kids. I proudly maintained with my co-worker and traveling pal, Brenda, a list of dozens of reasons not to get married, and an even longer list of reasons not to have kids. To ensure I stayed single, I regularly polished my unapproachable outer shell.
One fateful morning in the spring of 1994, I walked confidently down a dimly lit hallway lined with cubicles with nothing but business on my mind, and no idea my life was about to change. I strode into Mark’s office with a grant proposal and a question, knocked on the side of his 6×7 foot cubicle, looked into his blue-green eyes and said, “Hi, I’m Amy.”
“I know who you are,” he said as he moved the latest copy of “Diatom Research” to another spot on his desk. “We’ve worked in the same building and on the same floor for about five years now.”
“Yes, well, that might be true,” I said, feeling a hole developing in my defenses. “But we don’t really know each other.”
“No,” he said, his eyes lit like a lightning bug, “we don’t.”
“So, anyway, well, my question is about something in this pesticide proposal I have here,” and I mumbled and fumbled my way through my question without any idea what I was saying.
Somehow, my question made some sense to Mark, and as he rambled on about pesticide sampling techniques, I tried to think back to when he started working with the Department in 1987 or so. I could only remember walking by his office on my way to the Xerox Room a few days after he’d started and turning when I heard him say, “You’re a mutant tubificid.” As the coworker he was talking to countered with an equally derogatory biological name, I noticed Mark’s smile, muscular butt, and a ring on his finger. And that was it. He was married, so I hadn’t given him another thought. For five years.
As Mark went on about pesticide sampling techniques, I took in the four faces that stared at me in photos from his office wall. There were a dozen photos and none of them included a woman. A quick glance at Mark’s hands revealed he no longer wore a wedding ring.
Then he stopped talking.
“So, okay, um, I think I’ve got it,” I said. “You basically think this is a lousy proposal?”
“In a nut shell, yes.”
“All-righty then. Thanks.”
I’d suddenly run out of anything else work-related to talk about and, afraid to venture into anything more personal, quickly thanked him and — as I remember it — simply walked out of his office. Mark claims that that’s when I bumped into him; that when he stood, I made incidental contact with him. But I don’t remember making any contact with him. In fact, I didn’t feel anything and must have floated back to my office, because the next thing I remember, Sally suddenly appeared in my office asking, “So, how’d your meeting with Mark go?”
“Oh, fine.” And I nodded my head for good measure. “He thought the proposal wasn’t worth one fart in a bean hill.”
“He actually said that?”
“No. I don’t think he knows me well enough to be that expressive.”
“He’s a nice guy, huh?”
“Whattaya mean?”
Her face turned beet red and she sashayed out of my cubicle with, “Oh, nothing.”
I stood up, sauntered over to her office and asked, “What’s up, oh ye who says little and knows much?”
“Well, I think maybe you like him.”
“Who?”
“Mark.”
“Mark?”
“Yes.”
“I just asked him a question about a proposal.”
“Well, am I right or not?”
“Not that I know of.”
Confused, I returned to my office and wondered how anyone else could know something about me before I did. Or didn’t. I mean nothing had happened. I had felt stupid and warm all over and didn’t hear anything he’d said to me. And now I had lost all sense of awareness of my body and its surroundings. But, surely that didn’t mean anything.