Longtime friends, mom and stepmom bridge personal hurt with maternal love
Christine Cusick and Lisa Smith sat in the stands behind Vince’s Sports Center in Newark last Sunday.
They were doing the mom thing, cheering Lisa’s 5-year-old son, Joseph, as he swung the bat and dashed to first base.
They weren’t always this friendly.
There was a time when their relationship was awkward — particularly after Cusick learned that her friend was dating Joe Smith, the father of her firstborn child, Aleya.
When Joe Smith married Lisa and they had a son, the two women gradually learned to forge a new relationship — for the sake of their children.
Blending families takes time
Today is Mother’s Day. Countless mothers will get the royal treatment — flowers, cards, brunch. But the job of mothering often runs beyond bloodlines.
While there are no state statistics, a national sample survey conducted in 2001 estimated that 72.5 million children under 18 lived in blended families. Those families encompass a myriad of combinations of related and unrelated adults — including stepmoms, like Lisa Smith.
The classic image of a stepmother, brooding and demanding like the one in the fairy tale, Cinderella, doesn’t apply to Smith. Though the relationship was initially strained, Cusick always believed Smith would be a good stepmother.
Today, the women are friends — they can talk about anything, not just their children.
“It takes time” to reach such a point, said Peter R. Goodman, a clinical social worker with a private practice in Wilmington. “Sometimes it takes years. There’s a myth about blending quickly. It’s not true.”
Entwining of lives painful at first
Smith and Cusick grew up together, attending the same schools for 12 years. Smith still has a picture of them taken during a class trip to New York.
At 17, Smith gave birth to her first child, Jailynn. Cusick attended her baby shower.
Two years later, they celebrated at Cusick’s baby shower — for Joe Smith’s daughter, Aleya.
Neither woman married the child’s father.
Later, Smith bumped into Cusick’s ex-boyfriend, Joe, at the St. Anthony’s Italian Festival. They reconnected a year later, and he decided to call her. One date became two, and before they knew it, two months had passed.
All the while, Cusick hadn’t a clue.
She found out when Joe called her to ask for a sleeping bag so their daughter could spend the night with his new girlfriend’s daughter, Jailynn.
“I really couldn’t do anything … but hang up the phone,” Cusick said.
Sometime later, Cusick saw her ex-boyfriend and her friend — together — at a Wilmington nightclub.
“It hit me hard,” Cusick said. “I told my friends, ‘If she gets too close to me, I might hurt her.’ I wasn’t even sad. I was more angry at that point.”
A year later, a friend told her of their engagement. Cusick was hurt, to put it mildly, but she tried never to be mean. She credits her daughter for “keeping me sane.”
Despite her feelings, Cusick knew Aleya was in good hands with ex-boyfriend and his new wife. But the relationship was awkward. When Smith sometimes picked Aleya up to visit her father, Cusick had little to say.
“I don’t blame you for not liking me one bit,” Smith, now 27, remembered saying to her. “If the situation was turned, I’d be the same way.”
Adjusting took time. Cusick realized the relationship was permanent when her old friend and her ex-boyfriend, the father of her daughter, married.
‘I just got over it’
Today, the Smiths and their son, Joseph, and his half-sister, Jailynn, live in Newark. Cusick and Joseph’s half-sister, Aleya, and Cusick’s second child, Dru, live nearby.
All their children are close.
“Once they were married,” Cusick said, “I just got over it.”
When the adults are civilized after a breakup, Goodman said, they are able to co-parent the children. The additional parenting can make a healthy stepfamily.
“You could speculate that people want to do better by their children, so they’re more willing to try to compromise,” he said.
“There are a lot of stepparents who are tremendous parents.”
Both Cusick and Smith were raised by divorced parents. Growing up, Smith would spend every other weekend with her father and his new wife. She felt like like a stranger in their home.
When she became a stepmother, she wanted something more for her stepdaughter, Aleya.
“I didn’t want her to feel out of place being here,” Smith said, “because that’s what I had to go through.”
Cusick and Joe Smith said their daughter, Aleya, has adjusted well to their unique situation. He’s grateful his ex-girlfriend and his wife have been able to move forward.
“I guess I kind of lucked out,” Joe Smith said, “because they get along pretty well.”
“Many people don’t have the history we have,” Lisa Smith said of Cusick. “We have no problem talking about anything.”
Until the children become adults, the women will be seeing a lot of each other. And even if their friendship fades, Cusick and Smith said they will know they’ve put the children first.
Today, Joe Smith has a message for both of them: “I wish them both a happy Mother’s Day.”
Contact Christopher Yasiejko at 324-2778 or cyasiejko@delawareonline.com.
Reprinted with permission of The News Journal
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