For a wedding gift, Ken’s parents bought us a beautiful wooden salad bowl. Before I used it the first time, I seasoned it with a neutral oil to protect it, carefully rubbing it in and wiping off the excess, turning the wood into a richer dark reddish brown.
Over the years the inside of the bowl has developed an almost silky patina from nothing more than the combining of dozens, if not hundreds, of salads. It wasn’t something I tried to achieve. It just happened with time—and lots and lots of tossing.
The beauty of a salad is its individual parts—lettuces, other vegetables, maybe fruits, cheese, and croutons—all held together by some kind of dressing, whether a creamy version or a tart vinaigrette.
I’ve tossed a lot of things together in my salad bowl, and in my life, too, I suppose. It hasn’t all been successful. Some combinations married beautifully, but others didn’t make a harmonious meal, with ingredients never quite working as well in reality as they did in my mind’s eye.
When Ken and I decided to get married, we chose to buy a home together, one that would be a new start for us and the children, instead of me trying to move into their already-established world.
I had moved dozens of times. But almost always the search for new dwellings was something I did on my own, either looking to move into a house or an apartment that belonged to someone else or finding the place and then looking for a roommate. In the last decade, I had lived completely on my own, from my studio in San Francisco to my first townhouse in Columbus, then my condo in Dublin near Ken and the kids. Searching for a house with someone else in what still felt like a new city to me was a novel experience.
It’s hard to compare Dublin, Ohio, to San Francisco. At first glance, it might seem like no comparison at all. San Francisco boasts unique architecture, complete with Victorian houses with bay windows and frilly gingerbread detailing. Because of a limited amount of land, houses are built up, not out, so garages are the first floor with subsequent floors stacked upon one another, either divided into flats or lived in whole as traditional single family homes.
Being surrounded by water on three sides gives the city a unique climate, too. Dense fog is commonplace, making the rare blue-sky days something to celebrate. San Francisco has only two real seasons: rainy months from November to March, and the rest of the year. It might get hot in the East Bay and Marin during summer, and it snows inland in the Sierras in winter, but in San Francisco, most days are damp, foggy, and around fifty degrees.
Don’t be fooled, however. The fog cloaks the city in a rare and mysterious beauty that is breathtaking on its worst days.
Columbus, Ohio, on the other hand, is a solid Midwestern city, sturdy and practical. It’s a well-made wool blazer to San Francisco’s vibrantly colored silk sari. And Dublin is Columbus’s pretty sister with manicured lawns and spacious houses, neatly planned developments with stacked rock and brick entryways, and Irish names such as Donegal Cliffs and Tartan Fields.
Ever traditional, Columbus offers the usual four seasons, with something to love in each of them, if it’s only the anticipation of the next one to come. Winters tend toward cold and gray with occasional snow. By February, residents long for the rebirth of a spring that never disappoints: first daffodils, then forsythia and dogwoods and cherry trees, with so many blooms that the whole landscape is painted yellow and magenta and white. Residents reach for their flip-flops and shorts too soon, hanging up their winter coats and refusing to get them out again when a warm streak turns into a cold snap.
Summers are hot and sticky, green and lush, with pop-up thunderstorms and brilliant lightening displays. Crickets chirp, and fireflies light the night sky in a mesmerizing visual symphony. The cool of fall brings with it another palate of colors: ruby red, gold, and orange, melding into every possible combination on a single leaf. Autumn air smells wet with the scent of winter breezes not far behind.
Always too soon, each season leaves; but like clockwork, with the tick-tock of a big timepiece no one can see, the seasons return, one after another, year after year.
Ken loves to go through open houses. His Sundays are complete if he can find time to sneak into a couple of them in different neighborhoods, to study the architecture, the design, and how the residents use the space. We were looking at houses just for fun long before we decided to get married. I knew our relationship was becoming more serious when our searches turned from casual walk-throughs to discussions of how we might use a space and if we could see ourselves actually dwelling in a certain house.
After much searching, we found a house we all loved just a few blocks from Ken’s current home. It was close to St. Brigid Church, where the children went to school and the family went to Mass. (Later, we could hear the bells announcing Mass each Sunday, and if we heard it other days, we would guess at the occasion. Bells on Saturday likely meant a wedding. The single bell tolling over and over on a weekday meant a funeral. Early morning bells on a weekday meant an all-school Mass.)
The kitchen of the new house was spacious, and it was the focal point of the house, a plus for me. A built-in table attached to the island with the stovetop would work as both our place for meals and as a place for the kids to do homework. It opened into the family room, so everyone could feel connected no matter where they were downstairs.
Ken liked the screened-in patio that promised a place for summer meals, as well as a vantage point from which to watch the birds and wildlife that seemed to abound in the yard’s mature trees and bushes.
The kids were happy to know that they would each have their own bedroom, though they had to share a bathroom. It was divided so that one person could shower while the others still had access to the sinks and mirror, which would make bathing, teeth-brushing, and primping possible at the same time.
Ken and the kids moved into the house a few months before we were married. I set up the kitchen, moving in my appliances, pots, pans, and knives. It was my domain from the beginning.
Ken and I took inventory of the rest of our furnishings, deciding what to keep. My living room set was newer—Ken had helped me purchase it when I bought my condo—so we moved that to the new house. But the rest of what I had—an extra bed, a tattered dresser, a too-small dining room table with only four chairs—we didn’t need.
Some items moved directly from Ken’s old house to the new one, taking up the same place in the new space. A photo of Grace smiling from a ski lodge in Vermont moved from the original living room to the new one, as did a framed article with a photo of the five of them from the University of Dayton alumni magazine. It detailed not only Grace’s life, but also how Ken had set up a scholarship at the university in her name after she died.
Wedding photos of Ken and Grace came with us, too, moving from what had been their bedroom to what became ours. A young Grace, radiant in her white lace dress and veil stared at her bouquet of Gerber daisies from a frame on the nightstand. Another picture of her and Ken, superimposed overlooking the altar while appearing to look at each other, expressions full of hope and promise, stood on the bureau.
The photos remained there after Ken and I were married. I wanted Ken to have time to assimilate his grief into our new life, so I said nothing. We both had much to get used to. But as the months drew on, the photos stayed put. I knew he missed her, but I began to feel that he missed her more than he loved me.
These were feelings I didn’t feel I could share, not with Ken or with anyone else. I didn’t want to appear demanding, as though I wanted all traces of Grace removed. The opposite was actually true: I worked hard at asking Ken questions about Grace, at times purposefully in front of the kids so they would know that talking about their mother was fine with me.
Not only could I not share my feelings about the photos with anyone, I wasn’t proud of having them at all. I had a vision of myself being the ultimate caring wife and stepmother, carefree and easygoing, certainly not hung up with petty jealousies about my husband’s first wife.
Yet there she was, every day, every night, perpetually young and beautiful. In our bedroom. Over time, it became a knot in my throat that became more difficult to swallow.
About a year after Ken and I were married, I developed a friendship with a young woman at the newspaper where I worked. It was an unlikely alliance that no doubt God had a hand in.
Kristy was fifteen years my junior and perpetually perky and upbeat, in a Katie Couric kind of way, traits I usually find suspect. She moved from news to features to specialize in slice-of-life stories, such as the impact on a family after the father died fighting in Iraq, or the effects on a young woman a year after her fiancé disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
Kristy and I didn’t have much reason to interact, but one day she came to me and told me she was setting up a youth team of high school students for the paper. She wanted to get their input on story ideas and also to use them as an avenue to sources that might otherwise be difficult to access.
“Robin, you have kids in high school, don’t you?” she asked, stopping by my desk.
“No. Ben’s in eighth grade, and the twins are in sixth.”
“You have twins?”
“I do. They’re my stepdaughters.”
“You have stepchildren?” She was keenly interested.
Kristy, it turned out, was about to marry a man who had twin sons that were a year younger than Molly and Sarah, and a daughter a few years younger than the boys. It was like my situation, reversed.
Mike, her husband-to-be, was divorced, and the children’s mother was still on the scene, so their scenario wasn’t identical to mine. Still, we had so much in common, issues that few others in our lives could really grasp.
Kristy became my ally, my confidant. I could share with her the struggles I had with stepparenting and interactions with Grace’s family. She could listen with an understanding no one else possessed, and when she expressed her own challenges, it confirmed to me that I wasn’t alone.
“I accept that there are some things I don’t get by marrying Mike,” Kristy told me one day when we were having lunch together. “I don’t get to be his first love. I don’t get to have his first child with him. But I get to form my own paths with him, paths that have nothing to do with where he’s been or where I’ve been before now.”
There it was. Wisdom I had never put into words. I would never be Ken’s first love, either. We wouldn’t have that traditional first year of marriage where we could get to know each other through just living together, learning each other’s quirks and what buttons not to push—or to push when the situation warranted it—with no one but ourselves and each other to care for or about.
We started our marriage with Ben, Molly, and Sarah—not to mention an extra set of in-laws. I would always share space with Grace in each of their hearts. I would never have wife or mother space all to myself. But while I might not be the first or the only, I could choose to live in the present and not be covered in the shadow of the past.
The photos of Grace remained in our bedroom, but I tried to let them be little more than objects to me. My stony heart started to crack.
Despite a few rough patches in our early days of marriage, I reminded myself often of the signs from God that Ken and I belonged together, reflecting on how we had met, which, in itself, seemed like something of a miracle.
And sometimes, God reminded me himself.
When I moved into the house with Ken and the kids after we were married, I left a big plastic carton of photos in the garage. Ken asked often if he could bring it in and move it to the basement, but I always told him I wanted to go through it first and sort what I could get rid of.
In that first summer, we decided to have a garage sale, and my tub of pictures was taking up precious space. I finally acquiesced for Ken to take it to the basement. He picked it up and looked through the clear lid at the photo on top.
“Why do you have my photo of the chapel?” he asked, looking at the picture from the University of Dayton.
“That’s my picture,” I told him. “I took it. I’ve had it since I was in college. But what’s it doing on top of all the other photos? I haven’t looked at that in years.”
Ken said, quite certainly, “I took this photo. I remember the day I took it.”
“I remember the day I took it,” I said, just as sure. “I don’t remember taking that one exactly but I remember taking other photos of UD that day.”
“It’s my picture,” Ken said, in a voice with no room for doubt.
“How do you know it’s yours?”
“I remember every photo I’ve taken.” Ken makes his living as an engineer, but his passion is photography. He took it up in high school and never stopped, even working as a wedding photographer on weekends after college. His collection of photos is massive, yet he is attached to every one of them.
“Well, why do I have it in my things if it’s your photo?” I asked him.
Ken put down the tub and opened the lid. He picked up the photo and turned it over. He handed it to me.
“Do you remember giving this to me?” I asked him, not believing what I saw. Ken shook his head slowly. On the back of the photo was written, “Photo by Ken Heigle,” unmistakably in my handwriting, even the misspelling of Ken’s last name.
Months later, Ken was cleaning the basement because we were turning it into a television room for the kids for those nights when we didn’t all agree on what we wanted to watch. He came up to the kitchen carrying a stack of greeting cards. “Look at this,” he said quietly, holding up the cards. I took them from him and started to open the one on the top.
“They’re cards I gave Grace over the years,” he said, smiling.
I stopped and closed the card, handing the pile back to him. He looked confused.
I pushed down the knot in my throat and swallowed hard. “I don’t want to read them,” I told him as nicely as I could.
“Why not?”
“I just can’t. I don’t mind you talking about her. I like it, in fact, learning about her. But, honey, I can’t read notes from you telling her how much you loved her.”
“I don’t understand.”
I thought back to my conversations with Kristy and echoed her words. “I accept that I’m not your first love,” I told him. “I know that you loved her, that you still love her. But I don’t need to read your words to her to know that.”
“I would read letters you wrote to old boyfriends,” he said.
I sighed. “It’s completely different, don’t you think?”
“How?”
“Those former boyfriends and I chose not to be together any more. You didn’t choose not to be with Grace.”
He paused, looking at me. “I don’t understand this. I thought it was okay to share this part of my life with you.”
“Ken, I’ve let you share everything. I’ve never said no to anything. I just can’t do this. I have to draw a line here.”
“Other things bother you, then?”
“Sometimes . . .”
“What? What else bothers you?” His tone was growing angry.
“The photos,” I said. “Your wedding photos in our bedroom.”
He looked stricken. “I keep those up for the kids mostly,” he said. “They were always up in the bedroom at our old house.”
“I know,” I answered, feeling the waves of guilt building in my stomach while the childish emotions rushed out. “But I wake up every day and see her, see the two of you, so happy. I wonder how there can be any room in your heart for me.”
“It’s not the same,” he said slowly. “My loving her and missing her have nothing to do with how much I love you. And I love you very much. God gives us hearts big enough for exponential amounts of love.”
He gathered me in his arms, and I lay my head against his chest where I could hear his heart beating. Yes, I thought, my petty fears evaporating, There is certainly enough room in this heart of his for boundless love. I would just have to make sure my own heart wasn’t so stony that I couldn’t receive that love.
Slowly, over the next few months, the photos in our bedroom came down, and Ken put a photo of Grace in each of the kids’ rooms instead. Our house had all kinds of room for love. But sometimes we had to clear space and open doors to make room for all that God was giving us.
The truth is, the five of us together were almost always great from the start. We ate together, prayed together, and lived together as if it had always been this way. I sometimes thought that, had we lived in a void, on a private island, we could have lived conflict-free. But as I toasted at our wedding, I had married into not one family, but two. Juggling them, plus mine, turned out to be one of my greatest challenges.
Ken’s parents welcomed me as though I had always been part of the family. And more times than not, when we were together with Ken’s siblings and their families, the dynamic was great, although sometimes the sheer volume of people was overwhelming for me—three siblings, plus spouses, eight nieces and nephews, and dozens—literally—of aunts, uncles, and cousins.
With my sister, her husband and children, the family clicked, too. The day before we were married, Sarah said to me, “Do you know what I’m looking forward to most about the wedding?”
“What?” I asked, expecting to hear about her dress or the cake.
“Josh will officially be my cousin.” Her words were a testament to family.
Ken’s family longed to see their brother and son happy again. For my family, Ken was an addition, not a substitution or replacement.
I knew before we married that our relationship was likely to be difficult for Grace’s family. But I thought that, somehow, building a blended family would be easier for me. I did, after all, come from one myself, though I never would have thought to call it that when I was a child.
The only physical fight I ever got into was in the sixth grade when Kelly Hunter told me that my half brothers, who had a different last name from mine, weren’t my real brothers. I tackled the much bigger girl and scuffled with her in the dirt of the playground for even suggesting that my family was somehow less than whole or complete.
Perhaps due to the work of my parents or maybe just childish acceptance, I couldn’t see a difference between my half brothers, Rick and Scott, and my “full” siblings, Mark and Dorothy. I knew we had different fathers and that Rick’s and Scott’s dad had died. In the summertime, they would go stay with their father’s parents, Leone and Earl, and we would go stay with my father’s mother and sister. Then we would all meet at my mother’s childhood family home and visit with her family. There was nothing unordinary or strange about any of it.
Holidays were the same. Leone and Earl always came to our house for Thanksgiving and Christmas, as did my grandmother and Aunt Jane. I don’t remember strained emotions, tense conversations, or secret battles between any of the adults.
What I hadn’t anticipated with my marriage was that living in the shadow of a first wife could sometimes be an uncomfortable place, especially when Grace’s family visited. I thought somehow, over time, that the shadow would lighten, and the relationships would ease into a kind of relaxed acceptance. But as the years drew on, the relationships with her family seemed as stilted as they were the first time we met. I always felt like the outsider, the extra.
I grew discouraged and came to dread their visits, painting on a smile, but counting the minutes until they were over.
I found myself missing my parents more than usual, especially my father. “How did you do it?” I wanted to ask him. “What was your secret? Were you uncomfortable with Leone and Earl? Was there really no strain, or did you and Mom just make it look easy?”
Of course, Dad was no longer there to answer.
Slowly my questions to my father, usually uttered in frustration in anticipation of a visit or some other interaction, became something else entirely. Prayers. Daily prayers. Out loud. Usually in the car.
Those prayers became a ray of light. I don’t mean that my prayers were answered. In fact, I’d say that as I spoke them at the beginning, they weren’t answered at all. But my prayers changed, and my attitude changed.
In the beginning, they were one-sided bitch sessions, a laundry list of what I wanted, or the reliving of a perceived slight. “Why can’t this just be easier?” I would say.
It didn’t change the situation. It didn’t change our relationships. But there was something about my speaking the words out loud over time that changed me. Maybe just speaking my frustrations released me from them. Maybe I heard how selfish my prayers were. After a time, without my really noticing, the prayers changed.
“Please, God, help me to understand all of them better.”
Then, “Please, God, help me to have patience with them.”
And finally, “Please, God, help me to see them as you see them.”
I don’t achieve that successfully every day. But when I got to the point where I could start from the basis that we’re all God’s children and God loves every one (every single one, no exceptions), my perception shifted.
And the daily prayers, out loud, on my way to work and sometimes on the way home, changed more than just my dismay about Grace’s family. They became a way to refocus my thoughts from a laundry list of what I wanted, to prayers for those I loved—and even more important, for those I found difficult to love. It turned the light from inward to outward, helping me prioritize my thoughts and plans for the day from the moment I left the sanctuary of my home.
Our extended family dynamic worked on the level it needed to. I was just so entrenched in the minutiae that I often couldn’t see it.
When I lived in San Francisco, I developed what felt like a pulled muscle between my eyes, a tightness that often left me rubbing them, trying to refocus. Thinking that I needed glasses, I went to an optometrist.
“Look here,” he said, holding a piece of paper with letters close to my eyes, while he sat close, staring at my pupils. “Now here,” he said, moving it farther away. “Tell me when it’s in focus.”
He nodded, and performed a few more tests. “When I move the paper from close up to farther away, your eyes kind of wiggle, shaking back and forth while they try to focus,” he said. “Do you do a lot of computer work?”
“I spend most of my day at the computer,” I said. Then I remembered I was editing a book for a publishing house in the evenings. “I guess I spend a lot of time on the computer at night, too.”
He nodded again. “You don’t need glasses. You just need to look up once in a while. Focus on something in the distance.”
“Like the mountains?”
He laughed. “Yes, like the mountains. I prescribe that at least once an hour you look up from your computer and find the mountains in the distance. Train your eyes to see not just what’s in front of you, but what’s a little farther away, too.”
For all the stress and discomfort I might feel at a visit from Grace’s family, especially when it fell at a milestone event such as the children’s confirmation or graduation, I had only to look at the bigger picture, the mountains in the distance, to see that it was all working, at least from the kids’ perspective. The families—Grace’s, Ken’s, and mine—were together, united toward one goal: the happiness of Ben, Molly, and Sarah. Maybe we didn’t always agree on how to get there. Maybe we were a lot like the United States: different territories and personalities, different vistas and viewpoints. But united, nonetheless, in purpose, and ultimately, in love.
In the days before I became Catholic, at one of the last sessions of the confirmation rites for adults, Deacon Frank gave us an up-close tour of the altar. He stopped at the crucifix.
At St. Brigid, the crucifix isn’t like those of many churches, a large cross with a life-size Jesus hanging on it. It’s smaller, more of an art piece. Beside the cross is Mary, with her finger pointing up.
“It’s as though she’s saying, ‘Don’t look at me,’” Frank said. “‘Look at him.’”
And on the other side is St. John, with his finger on his chin and a scroll under his arm, as though thinking, What does all this mean?
“And notice what’s on Jesus’ head,” Frank said, pointing to the crown. “It’s not a crown of thorns, but a royal crown, a gold crown.”
He continued. “What we have to remember is that becoming Catholic doesn’t make us better than anyone else. And it doesn’t promise us a life without pain. Jesus doesn’t promise us a crown, a halo. That comes later, in heaven. On earth, he only promises a cross. We all have to take up our crosses.”
My cross is much like my salad bowl, worn and familiar. It is the opposite of “happily ever after.” It is the cross of hard work, suffering, and rebuilding. It is the cross of grace. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Warm Goat Cheese Salad
Makes 6 servings
This is one of Ken’s favorite salads of mine. When he eats it, he tells me I’ve spoiled him for eating in restaurants; he likes the food I cook better. For weeknight dinners, I go with something simpler: mixed greens with the same dressing, chopped apples, and crumbled goat cheese. But for a special occasion, it’s hard to beat this.
Vinaigrette:
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey or sugar
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar, fresh lemon juice, or a combination
Kosher salt to taste
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1 tablespoon chopped fresh herbs such as thyme or parsley (optional)
1⁄3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Salad:
Nonstick cooking spray
1 large egg
1 tablespoon water
1 cup soft fresh bread crumbs
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
2 logs (6 ounces each) fresh goat cheese, each cut into 6 rounds
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
10 cups mixed baby greens
1⁄2 cup dried cranberries, raisins, or dried cherries
To make the dressing: Whisk the mustard, honey, vinegar, salt, pepper, and herbs (if using) in a small bowl. Gradually whisk in olive oil.
To make salad: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil. Mist with cooking spray.
Whisk egg and water in a shallow bowl. Combine bread crumbs and thyme in another shallow bowl.
Season goat cheese lightly with salt and pepper. Dip in egg mixture, then in bread crumb mixture, coating completely. Arrange on baking sheet.
Bake just until bread crumbs are golden brown and cheese is soft but not melted, 8 to 10 minutes.
Toss greens with some of dressing. Arrange on salad plates. Top each with 2 goat cheese rounds. Sprinkle with dried fruit. Drizzle with remaining dressing and serve immediately.