Friday, December 10, 2004

Obligatory Explanation For Being Home On a Friday Night

Some of you may have noticed a certain amount of snarkiness creeping into posts and you'd be right. In the evolution of this blog I've noticed I have a tendency to sometimes get a little intense about how much I love my children and I'm afraid it, at times, borders on the maudlin. That bothers me because I hold to some pretense of authenticity (some stupid sophomoric grasp of existentialism) and I shouldn't be reluctant to put my feelings out there - HERE - or feel it necessary to explain myself. Still, I feel almost compelled to write ten sarcastic posts for every sweet one, lest I be perceived as a wimp. Pathetic.

I was going to write about Lilly and that's how this inane post got started. Lilly is sensitive, a flower, she's my future granola, vegetarian, Earth Muffin, Birkenstock and patchoulli-wearing 60's throw-back. As long as she's been old enough to conceive of "good" and "bad", she's had a deep-seated sense of shame such that, when she is corrected she cries because she just doesn't want to be wrong; she wants to be good. Marni will cry because Marni wants to keep doing what she's been told to stop doing but with Lilly, it's all shame, she doesn't want to be bad at all.

A couple weeks back, when I was putting the girls to bed, Lilly started crying because, she claimed, I had told Marni "I love you" with the tuck-in and good night kiss but had neglected to tell Lilly that. I was crushed. What transpired was a long explanation of how she was my first and because of that, she held a very special place in my heart, that I didn't love one child more than the other and that each child was "special" to me in their own way, Lilly being the first child, just like Daddy.

So tomorrow you get the sweet stuff. For whatever reason I had to explain myself here and I'm not sure it means anything but at least I've cleared the way for not having to apologize for being a doting dad.

No comments: