Almost 20 years ago, on the cusp of ending my first marriage I met another woman with a family larger than my own. We had both just moved to Vermont that summer and we met at our new church with our swarms of children upstairs in the Sunday school. Someone who knew we both had big families introduced us and I immediately took to this wonderful woman. While we were speaking another woman came up and introduced herself to my new mom friend. She immediately asked her about where her children came from. “Are they all yours? Are they your husband’s? Is he the father of all of them? Is your family like a yours, mine, and ours situation?”. I was shocked. My new friend, the mother of the other large family, looked at the woman and said very matter of factly “They are ours, ours and ours”. A wonderfully confusing answer which left the interloper confused and making a quick exit. I was left a little dumbfounded. While I had been on the receiving end of many weird questions myself, I had never had anyone inquire about the parentage of my children.

At the time I had 5 small children and had just moved from Houston to Vermont. Many people in Texas commented to me about the size of my family. Nine out of ten times it was an older grey haired man in the grocery story who would say something to me like “You do know where those babies come from, right?”, it was always delivered with a know it all smirk. What always surprised me about it was that that question is of a sexual nature and I was a young mom pushing a shopping cart full of children that heard them too. It never happened to their father or when he was with me. I am New Yorker enough to say something super snide or give an eye roll that makes the other person feel like the moron that they are. I most often acted like I never heard them or turned it to the truth…”I am incredibly lucky to have this beautiful family.”. Until that day in Vermont I had never heard someone say something weird to another mother about her family.

I never ask women with large families how they got their babies. I never ask women with one baby where they got it. It never occurred to be to do so. I never cared. They were moms of kids. I never saw a need to question the genetics or gestation of their babies.

I grew up in a little one square mile town in Westchester County where there were LOTS of big families. For some odd and fun reason, the babies of these big families were all in my small grade in school. I thought nothing of playing at the house with ten children or the house with 8 children. I did it regularly. More than one family had 6 or 7 kids and and several families in town had 5. It was common in my community. I never felt it was in any way odd. I did think it was fun. As the youngest in my own family, I always wanted a big family. In college my father used to tell me to stop telling boyfriends that I wanted ten children. He said it would scare them off! I remember laughing hysterically when he told me this. What he didn’t realize was that I was very serious. Somehow, some way, I was destine to have a big family. I would have found another way if it didn’t go the way it did.

Don and Tricia a couple years in to this journey, Empire, Michigan

After my divorce I thought dating with 5 children would be impossible. It wasn’t. Time after time I met men who told me they always wanted more children in their previous marriages. I found this fascinating.

Almost two years after my encounter in the church, I met and fell in love with my husband. Between us we had a 6 year old, 7 year old, 9 year old, 11 year old identical twins, and two 13 year olds. We dated for four years to make sure we had it right so we would not put our children through another divorce. We married the first day of August in the backyard of our new home combining our two families…7 children and the flower girl and ring bearer AKA Rosie the pet guinea pig and Cornelius the pet rabbit.

Our bridal party. Colin, Brooke, Jasper, Willie, and Adam in the back. Courteney and Scotty in the front.

Adam, Willie, and Scotty Captiva, Florida

We blended our new family really, really well. I have said this a million times but it was much harder for us as a couple to learn to share a household as full blown, functioning adults than it was for our kids to blend. We were each a little stuck in our own way of doing things and were each used to being in charge. We had to learn from each other and compromise. Our kids on the other hand were super enthusiastic and embraced their new siblings with complete joy. I like to joke that the conversation went like this. “How many video game controllers do you have? Great, bring yours over to my room and we can play. We can be brothers.”

Our three babies Courteney, Adam, and Scotty on Sleeping Bear Dunes very close to the Heaton summer cottage.

My collection of 7s on the kitchen mantle at Starlight Farm

The house we purchased was the big old 8 bedroom farmhouse in town that had been on the market for years. No one wanted it but the insane people with seven children. We loved it. We became a family in that house. We were home for our 7 children. We have engaged a great deal of time to make things as fair was we could for family harmony. We were the parents that did things. Did the school forms, made the doctors appointments, bought the back to school clothes and the school supplies, we delivered kids to school and went back to drop off forgotten lunches, we went to parents weekend. We dealt with all the things parents deal with, medical issues, broken teeth, upset feelings, behavior issues, and great successes. This was not about who was genetically related to each other. It was about love. Don was the sports dad and I needlepointed and filled the Christmas stockings. We had a lot of very busy years. Don took charge of all things which involved organization, order, and cleaning. He was into car maintenance, bus schedules, and school calendars. He did the dishes. He is really good at all the things I am bad at. I did the grocery shopping and managed our social calendar. I’m the blabber mouth, the communicator. I had all the really hard conversations while he cringed but was happy that I was saying the tough things. I brought up all the difficult topics at the dinner table like safe sex, birth control, drugs, friendship, dating issues, and safe driving. We learned teamwork as parents. It took us a while but the two of us managed to create a united front. Don and I became a team. Sometimes that parent team hid in the garage or in a bathroom laughing together saying “Oh my god, what do we do with these kids?”. This happened more than once when we caught kids doing things we ourselves did as teenagers.

Courteney, Willie, Colin, Scotty, and Adam in the backyard where we were married, Dorset, Vermont

The boys are amused with Don’s shenanigans at Scotty’s birthday dinner at the cottage.

A big brother greeting from the darling little sister

We do not use the word “step” in our family. Our children do not differentiate their siblings by genetic or marital connections. They use the terms “brother” and “sister”. We have 5 boys and 2 girls in our house. They are partners in crime. They look out for each other and get into great mischief together. And they bicker. Some more than others. When one got in trouble, it was with both parents. There were times some of them got into trouble together. Two nights ago I received a text from a hotel in Maui. Two of our kids were overjoyed to discover that they had both coincidentally ended up in Hawaii, a mile away from each other, on the same weekend. I can 100% guarantee that at no point did one say to friends “This is my step sister” or “This is my step brother”. They are brother and sister, in life and in their hearts. One of them asked me to pay their bar tab. Was it a surprise to the other? Probably not. I am sure they had a big laugh about it. What they don’t realize is that I am so happy that two almost 30 year old siblings would go out of their way to spend the afternoon together thousands of miles from home. That venmo was not taking advantage of me. That venmo filled my heart by saying that my children love each other and want to be together. The next day I got a photo of them sitting out by a pool. I treasure it.

Donnie Heat making breakfast for the crew at the cottage on Lake Michigan

We use the word “ours” to describe our kids. We also use the word “mine” to describe any and all of them. I fall in love with my husband a little more every time I hear him proudly call one of the kids “mine”. He earned that title 9 million times over. And he is theirs. “He is theirs.” That sentence is 17 years of devoted love by all parties involved.

Two brothers hiking along Lake Michigan with Don

BUT… and there is a BUT… Not everyone is okay with this. We have come across a few people who can not wrap their heads around the work we have done and that we are a “real family”. I was at a social gathering at some point a couple years ago and something came up about my family. I was asked by the person sitting to my left how many children I had and I said 7. The person sitting to my right leaned across me to the one on my left who asked the question and said “Tricia has 5 children. Two of them are Don’s”. This morning I told one of my kids this story and my daughter said she hates when people do that. She questioned why someone would want to diminish her relationship with her siblings and her father as “less than”..

A long ago Christmas at my sister Puddy’s in Lyme, Ct

I have noticed this more in the past year or so. Just recently I was telling a story about one of our children who lives in Europe and the person next to me leaned over and said “Is that your child or Don’s child?”. I usually follow the lead of the friend I told you about in the beginning of our story and say “our child”…and sometimes it stops there and sometimes it goes on to “no, really, is that one of your children or Don’s?”. The other question I get is “did you give birth to all of these children?”. It makes me wonder what kind of nonsense adopting mothers and fathers have to put up with.

What I have come to realize in thinking about writing this story… is that these infrequent questions given to blended families, which feels like they are trying to separate and divide really hard work is actually people attempting to label our lives in their own criteria. Don and I have spent almost two decades with the goal of nurturing and loving all the children under our roof and raise them as your own.

I was going to end this here but another thought just washed over me. There is a completely different side to this story and those are the stories of adults who were loved very deeply by parents that came into their lives. While we do attract a few detractors and labelers we also attract many, many more stories of great love and great joy. We have several people in our lives, adult friends, who share stories of great love and affection for parents who came into their lives through marriage and raised them as their own. I love when they tell us those stories because they know we get it and we know how deeply they were loved by dedicated mothers and fathers who saw beyond the labels of genetics.