Dad Entry #151

Christmas! We survived. Although, things aren't over yet; we have one more Christmas to celebrate, this weekend, with the kids' paternal grandpa's branching family, if that makes sense. They'll be young kids and old ones (like me) and just enough adult supervision to make sure everyone is richly fed, given gifts, and uninjured. It's really wonderful, all of our Christmas's are; we're fortunate.

Megan was stubbornly ungrateful for a certain present last year, and I was nervous for a repeat offense. Why the anxiety, you ask? Aren't you in control as a parent? Control is a complex, and often ambiguous, concept to me, and to employ and enforce it in a healthy, non-stunting way is perhaps the challenge of challenges when it comes to parenting. Did I answer the question :) Back to my story, I was nervous because we 'prepared' last year, also, but my daughter can be as obstinate as she is beautiful. Opening presents... it's one of those iconic moments for parents, your children before an audience in a scenario with tremendous potential for awkwardness and judgment (judgment dispensed by all, and rightfully so, but most liberally by people without children of their own, which I understand; as a person, I have no patience for rudeness either, and fear for children who routinely display it, but as a parent I've walked the tightrope, and therefore, right or wrong, I have a dash of sympathy to soften or sweeten an otherwise big pot of collective condemnation directed at erring children and their parents). So this year there were no supremely egregious violations of gift etiquette, although Megan - at Uncle Bill's, of course, with the same group of witnesses as last year - was too quick and deliberate in announcing that a shirt she received had an identical twin already in her dresser. It's always nice to have things to work on, I guess.

Megan still has a distaste for perspiration. She does, however, like physical competition, especially in gym class; she says it's just very exciting, beating the boys and knocking them out of games, and so on. These seem mutually exclusive to me: "I want to kick ass but stay cool, clean, sweet-smelling, and dry." I'm anxious for these competing preferences to clash, to see if a winner emerges. I know who I'm rooting for.

At moments, I'm purely certain Megan is the cutest human being on the planet. This poses issues, of course, or rather it imposes or attempts to sway, pull, move, like gravity or a strong magnet, but then the forces I perceive collide and cancel, and things seem to correct themselves or come back into balance, when Megan acts like a little shit. Therefore, somehow, I'm not afraid of any relinquishment of reality, or authority. But it's a daily struggle.