Thank goodness! My mother is referring to her stepdaughter's new baby as "my grandchild" instead of "my stepgrandchild." When in the course of human events, people consider the children they parented with someone else to be their new partner's children as well, to the point that the one's children inherit part of the estate of the other's antecdent, then the one had better damn well call the other's grandchildren her own. My sister and I were beneficiaries to part of our mother's husband's mother's estate, and I thought (privately, not to my mother*) that was pretty messed up, and more messed up when, after her stepdaughter fell pregnant, my mother for months said that her husband was going to be a grandparent but did not say the same of herself. That was then, though, and this is now. The younger German Shepherd had a puppy today and all is well, both in mother and child's health and in how my mother names the relationship.
I said something to RDC the other evening about when "my parents" visit us this coming May, because that's shorter than saying "my father and notstepmother." Depending on context, I also occasionally refer to my mother and her husband as "my parents." I don't think either of my actual parents would be pleased to know that I refer to a stepparent as parent. I don't know. I have never called RDC's mother "Mom" although she has welcomed me to do so. Perhaps it's okay if I refer to the sets as parents for convenience as long as I don't call people by onceling titles.
* Privately, because how anyone disposes of their belongings is none of my affair. My father wanted my okay about offering my sister some financial assistance, and I told him that his money, now and after that thing that he's not allowed to do, is his to do with as he wishes, and I promised him, solemnly by Shadow's memory, that it would never be a problem, and he had my okay if he wanted it but that he didn't need it.
The other baby is my mother's first cousin's new grandchild. Its raising will be more of a group effort than certain people might expect, and I'm all for village-parenting especially when the parents are as young and unexpected as these are. The baby, its mother, and my mother's cousin all live close enough that I hope my mother can work off some of her grandmother-jones on this kid too.
When I congratulated my mother on becoming a grandmother, because she had emphasized "finally" I offered that 20 years is a long time to wait. "But you've only been married 10 years," she replied. But you've known since before I married that I wasn't going to spore, I didn't say. Instead I finished my earlier thought, which is that my sister and I have been grown for 20 years. She, probably wanting to be supportive, once told me while I was in college, that she hoped I would tell her if I got pregnant. I didn't tell her that the fewer people who knew, the better off I would be--because heaven knows there's reciprocal gossip-sharing among her family--and that I would dread both her support and her censure.
Two significant things in therapy:
I am going to taper off Lexapro and see how it goes. Either it has helped me remember how to be me, in which case I'll be okay, or I won't be okay, in which case I might see it as medication to treat a chronic condition--dysthymia. The previous sentence's two clauses are not parallel. I know.
Between fall of 2003 and June 2005, I saw my shrink almost weekly. Most of the hiccups in that weekly schedule were unscheduled cancellations (occasionally I would get a call in time but more often I would show up at the clinic at 8:00 a.m. for my appointment and she would be absent). She excused herself by illness; of course I asked her if she was okay; and of course as a professional she thanked me for my ongoing concern and said only, "It's being addressed." Last June she graduated (I see psychiatric residents at UCHC) and referred me to her friend and classmate, whom I have seen perhaps a half-dozen times since. Yesterday, this second shrink told me that my shrink--who by dint of longevity and frequency is still who I think of as my shrink rather than this new (also excellent) person--died over New Year's. She was 34.