A Normal Family?
My story probably isn't one of your bedtime fairytales. But it is still, in some ways, a fairytale come true for my partner, our three teen-agers and me.
I met Lisa seven years ago when I first moved to Tennessee. I had moved with my son to escape a very bad "normal" life, and Lisa and I ended up falling in love with each other. She had a daughter of her own, and we were thrown together as a family. Lisa had been out of the closet for most of her life. I, on the other hand, had finally come out of the closet about three years into my six-year marriage.
It has been nearly six years since Lisa and I got together, and we are now raising three teen-agers: one hers, one mine and one ours after a friend granted us legal guardianship of her daughter whom she loved but wanted to enjoy a better life than she could provide. We try not to label our children as "yours" and "mine." They are all "ours." Our children think of our home life as being about as normal as you can get. Their friends' parents are all divorced, getting divorced or just plain miserable together.
We have a beautiful home. Our children's friends love to come to our home to play pool, Foosball and swim in the pool or relax in the hot tub. We are the parents the kids come to when they have problems at home and need advice. They call us "the moms." Our family is pretty well accepted in our community and by our extended families. We even have the mother-in-law, Lisa's mom, living in the guesthouse.
So, what is normal?