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Blending,
or agitating or churning, depending on the day . . . .
When any couple moves in together, there is a lot for each to get to know in
the other. In our case, we have never had the time!
No, that's not
what I mean. I mean that in our case the children also needed to get to
know each other and learn how to live together. To give just one example
of the powerful dynamics that forming our family set off, each pair of children
had an older child, who was used to being the boss. We thus had competing
older children, a competition which continues to this day, with neither Daphné
nor Nicholas understanding why the other does not simply
concede!
Blending existing families is very complicated, much more so than parents
typically realize when embarking on the task. All those competitive
dynamics, which are hard enough to handle when the children are with both their
own parents, become more intense and harder to regulate when each child can
accuse one parent of favoring HIS or HER own children. Which of course the
children all do in one way or another as soon as they
discover that they can. It took ours about a day to figure that one out in 1994.
It has continued in many ways unabated through the years.
The parents are getting better at handling this
sort of accusation, and through the passage of time and a lot of balancing and
gifts the children are more conscious that none of them is actually losing out
in any deep existential way. But the fear of disparate treatment is a sore that
can flare up with the tiniest seemingly banal incident. And so we move on,
trying to get it right, and to get the children to see that nobody is treated
exactly the same as anybody else. Which ultimately doesn't matter that much if
you are truly loved. They all are, and one day they'll all realize it without
the excessive doubts that have characterized portions of the last decade.
Well, to be honest that whole paragraph is more addressed to adolescents, which is who they
are now in 2007. When the parents first moved in together in 1994, there were
some undercurrents of the kind of dynamics described above, but mostly the
children wanted to be kids. Here they are
on the left fooling around to avoid going to bed at Le
Tahu, our first home, in late 1994. Boy was it ever wild in our house! There
is another photo from the same sequence here.
| Here are the two pairs of children that we started out with:
Above, Daphné and Alban in
Quiberon, April 1996
On the right, Nick and Tom in the salon
au Tahu, March 1996
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And here they are after a little blending.
Below are Nicholas and Daphné at the Christmas party in La
Bellanderie, December 1996. and 1995
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Here are Thomas and Alban,
at Flunch in Rambouillet, where we used to grab abite after doing the
shopping, in 1995.
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It did take effort, but with help from the Grandparents,
the Walt Disney Company, and especially Charlie
(our household's original glue), by the time we left France in June 1997, the children
were getting along fine with each other and with us. Then the French courts
intervened, but that's another story told here:
Missing You
In short, they spent most of their time during those early years being
kids. Here are a collection of candids, portraits and
whatever, with the common factor that they were taken after we all got
together and before we left France in June 1997. Pictures of
each of them during their early years can be found here:
Daphné Petite,
Little Tom, Alban Petit,
Little Nick.
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Visit to the coiffeurs, Rambouillet, 1996.
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Nick and Alban in Quiberon, March 1996
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In Quiberon, March 1996. |
On our frozen lake at La
Bellanderie, March 1997. |
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Jardin de Luxembourg, Paris, October 1994
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On a stage in St. Malo, August
1995. |
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Alban and Nick at La Grée, March 1996
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Alban and Tom in Le Tahu, September 1995
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We moved on, first on a short vacation in New
York City, and then across the entire USA on a
train. Finally, we settled in Santa Cruz
California.
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