Just looking up to God, arms wide in exasperation, while explaining to Him that I do not have this ability I am somehow supposed to have acquired...
Pleading my case of incompetence and ineptitude, irrevocably proven not only by my simian trios attitudes and behaviors recently, but the laundry list of my very own...
Today, our household has absolutely no resemblance to " Father Knows Best". There is no tic tac toe board of happy, singing children and smiling parents, no sweet but competent live in spinster maid in the very center...
We are not even " The Middle" today.
I'm thinking closer to The Bundy's...
I might be exaggerating a little bit.
I might be, but then again, I might not...
I love being a dad.
It is one of my truest, happiest and most fullfilling roles in this lifetime.
Many days have occurred in the last thousand years( plus or minus 986 years) of my being a father that have left me feeling good about my tenure. Those days, when children listened and responded in clumsy yet excited desire to be obedient, matched in equeal amounts, of myself being reasonable and rational in my own responses...
Do you remember those days?
I'm trying to..
They are all good kids, but just not good about being nice to each other.
They don't even seem to want to be; trying to make them be kind to their siblings is like juggling feral clawed cats with non stop diarrhea...
Yes, that about sums it up...
They are not bad kids and I'm really not that bad of a dad. It may be more of a problem of choreography, trying to get them do the things for each other that they would do for any friend or teacher or enemy..
I really thought at the beginning of this journey, that I could somehow find the right mixture of tinctures to have avoided these scrabbles, actually believing it possible..
It is an unreachable mirage.
Good kids all; just not a very good chorus of three, but good kids, still...
It probably isn't as bad as it sounds. Most likely this is all just a frustrated dad trying to out-fox and out-think nature, dreaming an undreamable dream...
It just seems that this pre -teen and teen thing have magnified their personalities tenfold, multiplied all the small irritations into full scale kailaidascopic frenzy.
Every parents wish is that their children will be close and will stay close to each other, not drifting away, as strangers. We pray that the concept of loving and connected family doesn't elude them as it has so many of us. We want for them an unbreakable tie that weaves thru all those they love and treasure; and we pray that in their mathematics, they factor each other into that fragile equation...
It is a beautiful wish.
It may be a mirage.
If it is, then I will cling to the hope of its future probability;
It will be my mirage.
It is my mirage...
