Found In Translation

When expatriate Alexandra Marshall moved in with her boyfriend, she faced a crosscultural dilemma. Could she be a good stepmother to a pair of French kids?

It was an early-summer day in Paris, and I was due to meet my boyfriend Stéphane’s two children for the first time. He and I had been a couple for only a few months, so the plan was casual—Oranginas with his son, Zacharie, then nine, and daughter, Irène, seven and a half, at a café near Stéphane’s apartment in Belleville. Afterward, we’d have dumplings in a Chinese dive they all loved. I rented a bike, and though I knew the route between Stéphane’s apartment and mine better than any other in Paris, I immediately got lost and used up our apéritif time pumping up and down the wrong hills. When I finally found the restaurant and pushed the jingling front door open, I was sweaty and ruffled. And then came an asthma attack. Nice to meet you, kids!

I had a lot riding on this. Blending into a family isn’t easy, and I knew there would be stages, each requiring instincts for patience and forethought: First I would meet Stéphane’s kids; then, eventually, his ex-wife and his parents. Could I become part of his family without disrupting it—or disappearing into it?

I was in my early 40s and had never had children, partly due to a freewheeling, mostly uncoupled life and partly a suspicion that my desperate, contradictory needs for independence and approval would make any offspring as neurotic and underloved as I often felt. I’ve always had an instinctive tenderness for kids; I just wasn’t sure I could entirely trust myself with their welfare. Also, although I’d expatriated to Paris more than a decade ago, I’d spent my first seven years mostly in the company of other Anglophones, and my command of French was not spectacular. How likely were my possibly future stepchildren to respect my authority if my reading level was below theirs?