What Every Child of Divorce Secretly Hopes for

I was a child of a divorced family too.  What did I want more than anything else in the world as a child? You guessed it.  I wanted my parents back together again.  I wanted them to live in the same house, be there to tuck me in at night, and to be there when I woke in the morning.  I think it's what every child of divorce wants.
Of course, today I know that their divorce was the best thing for everyone involved.  Today I know that they became great people in part because of the freedom being divorced gave them to be themselves.  Today, I can't imagine them being married to each other.  Today, I know that my unanswered prayers were really the best answers I could ever ask for.
If I'm telling the truth, my first set of stepparents (my parents have each been married 3 times) didn't stand a chance with me.  Sure, I liked them.  They were alright as people and they tried, each in their own way, to be a decent step parent.  Regardless of their efforts, I said (or screamed more likely) countless times, "You're not my mom!" or "You're not my dad!"  What I was really saying is that nothing other than having my parents back together would do.  Note:  I was probably 10 or 12 years old when this happened.  
A decade later when my new stepparents came into the picture, I was better equipped and more mature in how I viewed the divorce of my parents.  It's also fair to say my stepparents (aka Mom2 and Dad2) are monumental upgrades from the first set.  But even with the upgrade in parental quality, it was my maturity that made the difference in my view point.  I had come to an age where I recognized how important of a step leaving their first marriage behind was for my parents and how them staying together would have negatively impacted my life.  As I've mentioned many times before, having 4 exceptional parents who love you is always a good thing.
All of these memories came flooding back to me the first holiday we visited The Sonish as a couple on the East Coast.  We were taking him home on the last day of the trip when he asked us to see his room.  There's always that uncomfortableness of being in the other parent's house but we went anyway.  Like any other 13 year old's room it was full over everything he loved, including his mom and dad's wedding picture.  I couldn't help myself.  I picked it up and smiled at the gorgeous young man in the tuxedo.   In my heart I knew I had two choices.  I could either become upset and feel like I wasn't wanted in the family or I could stop and remember what it was like to be 13 with divorced parents.  Luckily, I chose to remember what it was like.  I took a deep breath, had a great giggle at how young The Hubs looked in that tuxedo and remembered that the picture on the dresser wasn't about me.  For that matter, it wasn't even about the couple in the photograph.  It was about The Sonish and what he longed for daily.
I have no idea if the picture is still on the dresser.  I actually hope it still is.  Not because I want him to long for something else but rather that I want him to honor and remember his parents and how much they love him no matter what their relationship to each other may be.  I want him to always know that he is loved and if keeping that picture on the dresser reminds him of those two people who love him more than anyone else, I'm really ok with it.