The assignment left in Ariel's*  homework packet was a family tree to fill out.   She wrote down her name on the bottom circle, then asked for information on my parents and grandparents.  I panicked.  My  immediate thought was:  that shouldn't be me!
       
I feared that if that was ever seen by anyone, namely X, it would look like I was forcing Ariel to put me over X.  As a stepmother, I've never done that and I certainly wouldn't put it on paper where it could  be thrown in my face with an accusation of trying to replace the child's mother. 
     
“ I need your mom's name too.  I only know her as Grandma Sandi” Ariel said looking up to me.  How do I tell her this? How do I tell her that in bloodlines relations,  that I wasn't the one to put down? I was glowing with love for the child.  She put me,her Stepmother, first in her mind and heart, but in terms of heritage and genealogy, I was going to be nowhere on that paper.   was surprised that I didn't feel hurt by this, but it was the truth.  

“ You know what? “ I said with enthusiasm. “You actually have two choices you can put down” I told her. She stared at me.

“ Oh yeah” I realized it had never crossed her seven year old mind to put her nearly absentee birth mother on her family tree.     

It was then that I hurt. Not because she wrote her mother's name down, I believe that was the right choice. What made me hurt was the fact that she was becoming so rapidly detached from her  mother that she had to be reminded of  the woman who gave birth to her.
   
There I had it.  Another solid confirmation that birthing a child has virtually nothing to do with being a mother. By many people's standards, I was not a mother, but only the wife of a man with a child. But to the child who mattered, I was “mother” for all practical purposes.

* All names, dates, details changed to protect privacy