I sat up Atticus in bed this morning while Irene was getting ready and watched while I stretched out. He kept looking at Sariah, the Siamese, and I wondered with his intense fascination now if he would later be a cat lover or just nonchalantly pass them by or maybe even hate them. God knows the paths we take that feed our likes and dislikes, our loves and hates. What will happen to him, how will he be transformed in the strange temperature of puberty? I think about that especially with his sister going through it right now. I get so busy, so caught up with what they say is important things that there are moments like splashes of water in the face when I look at her, clutching a book to her chest or smiling that I realize she is growing. It makes me want to cry. I feel distant and far away from her and I realize that this part of it may be necessary, that distance as she is crossing bridges that I don't know. But she and I have always had a tenuous relationship. Mostly on my part. I feel like there is always something stopping me from embracing her fully. Someone always reminding me that I am not her father or some other nonsense. Or maybe this is all me, in my head. Perhaps I have held back from loving her and now she is crossing a body of water and I am at the shore saying, don't go! Not yet. Is this what happens when they get older. Is this what it means to be a parent? Is this my love, always present always there, telling me that I have to learn to meet this new person that she has not yet become instead of her meeting me? How silly and adult of me. I need to adapt not her. I am not growing like that. My growth now is internal working it's way into my soul.

I carry so much weight from my childhood that despite my cursing out loud and damning certain people to take it back (Take it back, I say, like a bad name someone has called me, take it back) maybe I just need to let it all go.

My second self is screaming at me right now in the left corner of my head, HOW? You fucking asshole, HOW? Tell me how and I will do it.

I'm working on it.

I am.