🥞 I made pancakes for Dan's ex

Holiday stepfam surprises & celebrating unexpected traditions.

It’s my SD’s birthday next week, so I thought I’d share this piece I wrote on a different one of her birthdays a couple years back. This is my last post/email for 2024, although I’ll keep popping into the chat through the holidays. Thanks so much for being here and we’ll be back in January! xo

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When I was a kid, my dad made us pancakes every Saturday morning, the delicious big fluffy kind. Once in a very great while, my mom would make Swedish pancakes instead, more crepe-like and delicate. We used to beg for those pancakes.

At some point after Dan & I started dating, weekend pancakes became a regular tradition for us too. I remember feeling uncertain the first time I broke out my mom's Swedish pancakes recipe, wondering if SD might refuse to try them since they weren't like "normal" pancakes. Instead, they immediately became one of her all-time favorites.

Swedish pancakes are delicious, but when you've got a couple hungry kids and a bottomless pit of a husband, you have to spend a long time at the stove pouring and cooking and flipping. At first I felt left out on those pancake mornings, stuck in the kitchen by myself cooking while Dan and BD and SD ate and chatted and poured syrup on everything. Making pancakes felt like an extension of the stepmother role itself: kind of part of the family, except not really. Not really included and no one really misses you. (They'll eat your pancakes, though.)

Then as tensions within our house worsened over time, I started welcoming the solace of pancake-making mornings. Anything to give me a break from SD's hostility. Some mornings I'd cry as I cooked and flipped, wishing I felt like I could sit at the table with the rest of my family without ruining SD's entire day. Other mornings I'd feel thankful that she still ate my pancakes at least, that pancakes were one thing I could contribute and know she enjoyed.

When every other way I tried to connect with my stepkid felt like a flop, at least I had pancakes. It wasn't even close to enough, but it was something.