Bee Is Your...What?

It would be simple and accurate to say that Bee is my very close friend. We spend just about every holiday together, we text every other day or so, and we’ve gone on vacation together, Bee and her husband, EJ; me and mine, Beau. We tend to read the same books—except that she likes science fiction and fantasy more than I do. Bee and I look alike: slightly pear-shaped white women of a certain age, blondish hair, glasses, colonial facial features. She’s a little taller and has brown eyes to my blue.

The simplest way to explain it is that we’re friends. Alas, not nearly complete. Buckle your seatbelt.

Bee and I are divorced from the same man, the father of our children. (I briefly considered calling him Fooc—what? It’s an acronym!—but that seemed disrespectful for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. Better to call him F.) Bee gave birth to two children with F, and I produced one.

Now, Bee married and divorced F first, and then I did, so it’s not as interesting as you may have been thinking, especially if you don't know us very well. They were together for thirteen years, and then we were together for thirteen years.

So our kids look like siblings because Bee and I look alike, and our kids have the same father. Also, Bee and I have very modest genes that don’t really feel the need to express themselves in the outward appearance of our offspring. All three of them look like their dad.

Inside is another matter. Anyway, that’s the part that really counts, not that I’m competing. Many times I’ve seen Gnat, Bee’s daughter, shape her father’s face into her mother’s expression. I love that.

Genetic expression is extra-fascinating to adoptees.

Once when the three kids were little, F and I took them on vacation to Cape Cod for my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. While they were playing together on the beach, a woman came up to me and said, your kids look so much alike! I said, well, the older two are my step kids, and the youngest is their half-brother. She flat-out didn’t believe me, insisted they must be full siblings. Called me a liar. At least, that’s what it sounded like. She had a strong Boston accent.

Bee’s two children, Gnat and Ed, lived with their dad and me every other week from the time they were six and four, respectively, until they left for college, respectively. They were the best possible older siblings for baby Max when he came along a year and a half after their dad and I were married.

Bee and I fell into the roles of administrators of the logistics when Gnat and Eddie moved between our houses—though their stepdad and father were actively involved in other important parts of their upbringing, to be sure. Bee and I also managed the joint finances for summer camp, doctor visits and when the time came, tuition. We were the two parents who were guaranteed to show up on Back to School Night and teacher conferences, two look-alike women crammed together at those little desks. Very likely a lot of people thought Gnat and Eddie had two moms. Well, they did, more or less.

When Max was a baby, his dad and I went to Hawaii for a week to celebrate my fortieth birthday (geriatric mom alert!). Max stayed with Bee and EJ. They were, and still are, his other parents. When he was a couple of years older, Max asked this: Mamia, if you and EJ are Gnat’s and Eddie’s stepparents, then are Bee and EJ my stepparents?

The answer is no, but then, what is the term to describe the relationship between Max and his siblings’ mom and stepdad? Sometimes you’re forced to invent succinct, descriptive terms. For a while, I referred to Bee as my ex-wife-in-law, but when her ex and I divorced, that didn’t work as well. My former ex-wife-in-law? Now that’s confusing.

Another shock was that, after their dad and I divorced, Gnat and Ed were no longer my step kids, in the eyes of the law. Legally, they were nothing to me. Nothing! That just goes to show you how good the law is at defining relationships.

As EJ and I know all too well, even real stepparents don’t get no respect. I tried to take Gnat and Eddie for passports one year, so that we could visit their dad’s relatives in Chile. The passport office laughed at me. Apparently the real parents are required, by which they mean the legal guardians. Not silly old stepparents.

Similarly, the law considers your dog a possession when you go through a divorce. Equivalent to a blender. Clearly the law and the heart live in different universes.

Freshman year, Ed stayed at my house his first night home for Spring break, the first holiday after their dad moved out. He now had three parental homes. Gnat called me every Tuesday afternoon for help with her physics homework that year, her junior year in college. I’m not sure that I was very helpful, but these actions showed we were family, still family, solidly established. Gnat, Ed, Max, their father, stepfather, Bee and I.

But even this picture, based in history and practicality, doesn’t tell the whole story. Bee and I are really friends. In our own right, deep down. Irrespective of how we came together. Some people might even think, despite how we came together.

One of the many important lessons I’ve learned from Bee is about family. The family I grew up in, even though it was assembled through adoption, was very insular. Family meant the five of us: mom, dad, the three kids. Even cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents were highly peripheral. Significant others weren’t included until you married them. And often, not even then.

But the first day I met Bee and EJ, shortly after I’d married Bee’s ex, she offered to take me to Gnat’s and Eddie’s elementary school. She took me to meet the principal and Gnat’s first grade teacher. She invited me to sit next to her on Eddie’s first day of kindergarten.

Bee’s immediate inclusion of me in her big-hearted, flexible concept of family was revolutionary to me. It’s not an exaggeration that meeting Bee represented a pivotal point in my life—maybe even more than meeting her/my ex-husband. I prefer Bee’s understanding of family to the one I grew up with, and I’ve taken it as my own. It has served me well, as I’ve integrated into my heart not just Bee’s and my family, but the members of my two birth families.

When I started dating again, Bee and EJ were the people who knew where I was and with whom. I checked in with them before and after every first date. Can’t be too careful when you meet people online. EJ even mentioned something about a shotgun at one point. I’m 90% sure he was kidding. But you know what? If I’d asked Bee or EJ to sit at another table at the coffee shop, while I was assessing a candidate (and he assessing me), by gum, they would have done it.

There were a lot of first dates, and not many seconds. I joked with Max that I really needed only one nice outfit, back in those days.

Bee and EJ whole-heartedly embraced Beau, when the two of us started dating. Beau and his family have become part of our family, too. Pre-Becky, Beau’s family was tiny. Years later, they’re still sometimes a little bewildered by all of us. And they're part of us now.

These days Bee, EJ, Beau and I meet for dinner even when the kids aren’t around. Bee and I have done day trips together, and we started playing pickleball on Fridays. Gnat is supposed to come too, but she just bought a house and she’s busy.

Bee and I are actively pursuing indolence, though we’re not above expressing our thoughts on mortgage insurance and stackable full-sized washer-dryer sets in our three-way texts with Gnat.

A few years ago, Bee and EJ won a week at a condo in Maui in a church auction. It was a two-bedroom place, and they invited Beau and me along. Now we’re talking about a trip to Northern Europe to see the aurora borealis, once covid has grown tired of having its way with us.

More recently, somebody on the neighboring pickleball court asked Bee and me whether we were sisters. A pregnant pause ensued. It’s so much easier, and not inaccurate, to say, no, we’re friends. Otherwise you’d better hope there’s a whiteboard and at least three colors of markers nearby.

[That's Bee, Gnat and I in the photo above, from 2017. We were on a shopping trip to find Gnat's wedding dress. Photo creds: Gnat's friend Sarah.]