TEENAGERS!!

I'm tired. But I'm fighting hard. I can feel the crushing weight of my grief closing in on me. I don't want to succumb to it again today. Yesterday I managed to prop the grief up by keeping busy and pushing it back with shear stubbornness. But this morning I'm tired.

Nicole is stressing bad. It is TAKs time, you teachers out there know what that means. With everything, Nicole isn't bearing up under the pressure very well this time. She has always been able to shrug it off in past years. Sometimes I worry about her. But I'm sure she worries about me too.

You Know, of all the boys, Luke's personality is the most like me. Lord knows I love him very much, but I will be honest, I just don't know if he is going to survive to see 14 years old. Arrgghh! I would really like to know when I stopped being the greatest Dad in the world, to being the worlds dumbest person. I told him last night to get into bed early because he was taking a TAKS writing test today. When I got home, the first thing that I found was everyone getting dressed except for Luke. He was still sleeping. Nicole informed me that he was still awake and wandering around the house at 11 pm last night. I lost it! But in typical teenage logic, I am wrong and mistreating him, being cruel and unfair. I love him dearly, I swear though, I promised myself that when I was a Dad I would give my children all the self confidence and individuality that I lack as a young man. It is brutal! My boys speak up and talk back sometimes in ways that just knock the wind out of me. I have to stop and catch my breath before I overreact, remember that I want to nurture that self confidence to speak up for themselves, not squash them or make them timid. But they sometimes shock me. I would never have had the guts to speak to my father like they do to me sometimes. The balancing act is instilling a respect for others into that self confidence. Sometimes, like this morning, I really wonder if I'm creating monsters. Freaks that won't be able to recognize when to hold their tongues and think before they speak. I hope Luke's difficulty with this concept is just his age and not a side effect of my parenting choices. Man! I'm getting OLD!