I am tired of this step-parenting now. This wicked witch business isn’t as much fun as the stories suggest.
First of all, I had to move to a new kingdom where everything is strange and unfamiliar. I don’t know where the broomstick shops are or wh
ere to go to buy toads and cauldrons. I have to get to know a whole new set of courtiers and citizens, and learn to understand their accents and fit in with their ways. I left my lovely castle, where I was totally at home; my real fire; my utility room; my garden with its herbs and precious plants. And I came to this foreign castle, with its unfamiliar customs and its strange pictures on the wall and its oppressive heat and its adorable but irascible prince.
Worst of all, I took away my own children’s castle too. I thought they were ready to move on to their studies in their chosen kingdoms but I now realise they were not. Perhaps I was not.
Anyway, now I am about to change the decor of this new home. The wicked stepmother strikes again, changing the treasured memories of the stepchild, invading his childhood home with pictures and ornaments and photographs which mean nothing to him. Having been the wicked mother, I am now the wicked stepmother too.
This morning, Prince Charming and I went to the storage unit to bring back the pictures I had brought back from my old home. I found pictures my eldest had painted over twenty years ago, in pre-school. I found my second child’s cushions and pictures in a box; and the SATs paper my third-born had written as a ten year old. And I knew that the old kingdom was well and truly gone…and the new one is still strange.. and my old life won’t really fit here. Wicked witches cry sometimes.
So now, at home (my new home), I have taken most of the pictures off the walls and over the next few days and weeks, Prince Charming and I will sort them and rehang them. Perhaps we will buy some new ones for our new, joint life. Perhaps we will sell our two castles and buy a new one together.
Whatever happens, I will have abruptly ended my children’s childhood and uprooted them to a new and unwanted region, where they feel out of place and unwilling to settle. And I will have invaded the stepson’s castle and made irreversible changes to his lifestyle: eating at a table; limiting screen time; marrying his father but not being his mother. 
And actually, I do resent his presence here now because my own children are NOT here. I don’t want to chat to him when I should be talking to them; I don’t want to see his clutter around because it reminds me that theirs is no longer there. My children are grown up and gone, and I am not ready to be a mother again, second time around. It is harder than I expected. I don’t particularly choose to be a wicked stepmother, but it seems I cannot avoid it.
Meanwhile , the real mother is lurking in the shadows, making everything more complicated. But that is another blog.