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It’s hard to believe that over a year has gone by since we moved to California. Our second summer began with the popping of the champagne to celebrate our one year anniversary of the gluing together of two mutually broken families. One year ago, my Brusband and I were so nervous . . . so much change heaped upon his kids and mine: another state and school system to adjust to for mine; another culture inhabiting Joetopia for his.

Would the pieces fit together, we wondered. Can you take two broken families atremor still from the aftershocks of divorce, worn, torn and weary, and put them together and expect a happy outcome? Is that a reasonable expectation, Joe and I wondered. Or are we both so damaged that we will lie upon one another like anchors, causing both families to sink further, faster. Yes, we spoke of such things late at night, early in the morning, on the phone, expressing our fears and concerns, examining the upsides, downsides and risks, months before the actual coming together of the families occurred.

Like a broken plate, we were. His half having no mother, our half having no father, and the children lost for the lack of the company. We wondered if it could really be so simple as filling in the spaces with cousins and exchanging mom for aunt and dad for uncle? And what kind of tapestry will we have when we are settled? Will the pieced-together plate turn out pretty or ugly? What if it turns out to be half Van Gogh, and half Howard the Duck? Is weird better than un-whole?

Our late night discussions on the subject of moving in together led us to the conclusion (because we are such hopeful beings, at heart) that if we proceed with caution, if we are gentle in the application of the glue, gentle in the handling of the plate, we could, perhaps, mitigate the damage of the respective breaks. We could, maybe, make the break disappear. As parents, we couldn’t help but harbor the hope that the two sides would fit, that the glue would dry, and miraculously, over time, the seam would disappear.

In retrospect, we got lucky. Not only did the two halves fit, but the blending was seamless and the seam itself is fast fading. We don’t feel broken any more. We have, in the grand tradition of many survivors from time immemorial, simply chosen reinvention over a decreased quality of life.

We function, more and more, like a functional family.

The older boys now clearly do at least a third of the grocery shopping. They don’t miss items so much anymore. They are getting faster at it. They still don’t like it when I put strange things on the list. Last week I made a salmon stir fry that required oyster sauce . . . “Don’t ask me to get stuff like that, Aunt Kate, it’s a pain,” exclaimed Jeremy upon return.

I started with them gently, of course. I took them along with me to introduce them to the process and listened to them say things like “Why in the hell are there so many choices in tomato sauce and so few choices of donuts?”

When the oldest was ready for a solo mission, I sent him with a short list with very explicit directions. Soon, his brother was able to do the short list shopping. The short list had five items or less. As mastery occurred, I moved the bar up to seven-items. It was at this level of education where Jackson returned home with a whole chicken, in place of the ‘thinly sliced oven roasted turkey breast’ that was specified on the list.

“Jackson? What’s the chicken for?” I asked upon unloading the groceries.

“It’s on the list!” he said, unflinchingly.

“Where?” I asked.

He studied the list and then hit his head with the palm of his hand and said, “Ohhhh, that’s what you wanted from the deli!”

You can see why sometimes I fell to making inflammatory statements about my housemates.

With patience on my part (and Joe’s) and practice on theirs, they are becoming quite civilized, all of them. They do dishes, they clean house, clean the pool, they tend the plants, and sometimes they even cook! There are five of them; a huge amount of horsepower.

After the teenagers cleaned the house for the first time, my brother said “What did you do to my boys?”

“What?” I asked.

“I finished working in the garden, was heading for the house, and I passed Jeremy who said to me, just as I was about to open the door, ‘You’re not going in with all that sand on you, are you?’”

I grinned.

“What the hell have you done to my boys?”

My grin widened. The grin of the victor. Victory of she-clean over guy-clean.

They all went to college this summer. Their schedules had them up at seven every morning (yeah!) and each spent four hours a day in classes and another two to four hours a day studying. Yes, this made the Sife very happy. The summer gaming (World of War-craft) marathons temporarily abated! (Who’s the warrior now?)

Last summer was lost to packing, moving, and unpacking. When we arrived here, my nephews introduced their cousins to WOW and the world of socialized gaming and though Joe and I were very happy everyone had something to bond around, it wasn’t academically challenging, nor could it be good for their health. Alas, last summer was a bone tossed to the gods of “We Move Too Much”. This summer, things were so much better.

This summer, life in Joetopia was all about foreign languages and music. We now have all five tweenagers (my word for teenagers plus) studying Spanish. Learning Spanish has really challenged them and though they struggled, they also enjoyed the process. Joe and I will have to take a class now, because more and more, they are speaking Spanish to each other and to us.

Adam said one night, “I think knowing Dutch, English and Spanish will make it easier for me to learn Latin. I think that would be a great set of languages to master.” I could have kissed him, but I refrained. All the boys were gathered ’round and if I kissed him publicly, he wouldn’t say such things again.

We have four fifths of them playing instruments again. We have a guitar player, a pianist, a flutist and a trumpet player. We have an inactive harpist / violinist; she wants to wait for high school to take either up again. Negotiations in process . . .

We have pet names for the children and them for us, as it turns out. As a child, my Brusband was called ‘Little Joe’ and then, sometime after I did a skit about him that flipped his name around, he was widely referred to as ‘Jittle Lo’. Wills modified that recently to Juncle Oh and uses it when his Uncle annoys him.

Mae is my mole. Joe calls her ‘moley’, because she is always so close to me. She likes to crawl into the space behind me on my desk-chair, and hang out there, all squished up. “I would pay money to have that mole removed,” Joe says to me, teasing her.

The two younger boys – my youngest, and Joe’s youngest, are affectionately referred to as ‘the Tiggers’, on account of the fact that they are both very personable, very sociable, yet the nerve endings in their brains haven’t all quite connected, so the character traits associated with effective single-tasking are yet to blossom.

Jeremy is referred to as Farmer Jay, but that’s only because he’s taken the lead on the farming end of things and he has a decidedly green thumb. I haven’t asked what name they like to call me; I don’t think I want to know.

Wills doesn’t have a nickname. He does have his desk right next to the door of the boy’s wing (still referred to as ‘the Addition’) and that makes him the closest available kid when a parent opens the door. He’s the closest available kid when a chore needs to be done. He’s the closest kid to tell ‘go to bed’. He was only in his new space a few days, when he complained about it.

“You guys always open the door and say things to me! There are three other people occupying this room, but you always talk to me because I’m right by the door.”

Joe laughed. And thereafter, every time Joe opened the door to that room, no matter what time of day or night, if Wills was occupying his seat at his desk, Joe would say “Go to bed, Wills.”

It aggravated the hell out of Wills for the first few times and made Joe laugh out loud each time, at the sour expression on Wills’ face.

Wills is also at that age where he’s trying to assert independence from Mother. He argues with me about everything, unmindful of repeating themes. And every time he engages me, (Mom, let’s talk about this AP class thing; I kind of liked the regular classes), he approaches like it’s a brand new argument, even though it’s a tired old argument, one for which he has zero chances of winning.

One day, one such argument did not go unnoticed by Juncle Oh. Listening for a few minutes until there was a pause, Joe jumped in and said “You know Wills, the way you like to argue, you really should be a lawyer.” After that, instead of telling Wills to go to bed when Joe opened the door to the boy’s room, he would say “Wills – be a lawyer.”

One sour face from Wills and it became Joe’s new mantra. When Wills said, “I did dinner dishes last night! It’s not my turn.” Joe says: “Wills, you should be a lawyer.” When Wills said, “I did two hours of homework after school. I just want to game for a little while. Why are you micro-managing me?” Joe says: “Wills, be a lawyer.” When Wills said, “I don’t need to read the whole book, Mom; it’s too long and it’s too depressing. It’s all about a poor kid in Apartheid South Africa whose hunger never ends and I already read the first hundred pages; I already read about forty pages from the middle and with forty pages at the end, I can handle the debate.” It was my turn to say, “Wills, be a lawyer.”

One day Wills said at dinner, “What if I don’t want to be a lawyer?” All at the table replied in unison, “Wills: Be a lawyer.”

The summer ended with an interesting twist. Grandma sent an email to me telling me about a national book depository that allows college students to rent their textbooks and return them after using them. The cost of rental compared to buying allows for considerable savings; thus, I was interested, and passed the information to the boys, via a sticky note on the refrigerator. “To rent college textbooks, visit Shagg.com.” I never checked the site.

Weeks before school started, at sunset, the boys were gathered around the pool with friends. I took a seat on the swing and said “Did you guys order your textbooks?”

Jackson said “From the porn-site you sent us to?” And the boys all laughed.

“What are you talking about?” I asked Jackson directly. “Grandma sent it to me; she said your cousin Jake uses it for his medical school books.”

“I bet he does use it,” said Jackson and again, the boys laughed. “But not for textbooks.”

It struck me then that the website name did sound more like a porn site than a bookstore. “It’s Chegg dot com” hollered Jackson as he dove into the pool. He popped up nearby, shook the water off his face, and said “‘C’, ‘H’, ‘E’, ‘G’, ‘G’ — Chegg dot com. I think Grandma misunderstood, but you should thank her for recommending both sites.” His friends nodded in agreement, so I knew that all of them had already visited Shagg.com. I haven’t and am just going to pretend it didn’t happen. I did take down the sticky note on the fridge, however.