Step-family? I’ve got an entire staircase.

Step-people–step-parents, step-grandparents, step-siblings, and step-kin–define my family. If assembled together for the world’s most awkward family photo, my step-family members would require a sprawling staircase. Not even counting the step-pets. Perhaps one of those inverted diagonal staircases that appear to lead upstairs and down, over and under simultaneously ala M.C. Escher would do the trick. Suffice it to say, my family tree required a forest of its own even before I married and added in-laws and progeny of my own.

Explaining my family constellation requires undivided attention and plenty of learning tools: Your parents split in 1979, okay. Your dad re-married a woman in 1981, got it. Your mom married his new wife’s ex-husband in 1984. Wait. WHAT?? And that only brings us to 1984. Even George Orwell couldn’t have predicted my family. Table condiments serve as handy learning tools, but simple ketchup, mustard, salt and pepper won’t suffice. For my parents alone, you’ll need to add sweetener packets and jelly pods, pickle relish and Sriracha. Who gets to play which condiment depends on the day, my mood, and the guilt I’m processing over whomever I’ve most recently neglected. When my own kids must fill out a family diagram, the entire page is filled and onto the reverse, before we even get to their father’s side. Thankfully his side is both small and in-tact. You can imagine the fun they had at our wedding; So you’re Ann’s…umm… Oh of course, her double-step-sister! I’ll let you consider double-step-sister for a minute, but it’s hard without the pickle relish and Sriracha.

I don’t have family picture albums, I have boxes of family picture albums. Sorting them gets very confusing. Who are you? How are we related? Wait, ARE we related? It takes that whole “first/second/third cousin, once/twice/forever-removed” story problem and turns it into step-sudoku calculus. Sudoku-calculus might not technically exist, but I’m pretty sure it’s the right mathematical platform for understanding how I ended up with a huge triangle in the middle of my family genogram. Growing up, my family had three different last names, and kids going back and forth from more than that many households. It was chaotic, yet highly-organized, and totally normal all at the same time.

The staircase continues expanding. I’m surrounded by an embarrassment of riches when it comes to family. Embarrassment and riches both, but mostly riches. My nuclear family of origin definitely went nuclear, but as the fallout continues, what remains is abundant love and endless fodder. Families are messy equations regardless of mapping, and If anyone loves to laugh about complicated family dynamics and the ridiculousness of it all, it’s us.

Daddy’s Home starring the inimitable Will Ferrell as a mild-mannered radio exec striving to excel in his new role of step-dad opens Christmas Day in theaters nationwide. Hijinx and ridiculousness ensue when Mark Wahlberg arrives on the scene as the ex husband and father. This trailer cracked all four of us up. No sriracha required.

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