I have some kids who soothe my soul, more than half of them perhaps, and the rest dearly want to do so…to be so…they just don’t know how, and subsequently spend a great deal of misdirected time and energy trying to prove to themselves that I’m just not worth it.

Or their own tenuous sense of self-worth, even a feeling of deeply held worthlessness that stems from many years of parental neglect and abuse, forcing us adoptive parents to learn new ways both of parenting and of relating to children who do not desire to respond to our entreaties of love.

Try all you want folks, I tell my children, but you’re not pushing me away. I’m just putting on airs for you readers, usually I holler, “Oh no you ain’t gonna ignore ME!”

Generally they don’t.

There are times when I’m way too much to take, way too overbearing and in their early twenties I see a great deal of peeling oneself off of mother and learning to stand on one’s own two feet. This I like and encourage but it is the dumb rebellious steps that seemingly make no sense that continually irk me.

Like I’ll show her they think and they refuse to pay their bills, running to me later hoping I’ll help them financially. Not a chance. I don’t have that kind of money, but I’ll be happy to help them establish a budget and to learn to live beneath their means.

I’m so accidentally entangled and enmeshed with my children. My 20 year old son, using my email address for some reason for his car insurance, thus ensuring that late notices will arrive in my face, not his. “What’re you thinking, son?” I’ll holler to his deaf ears.

Today, briefly as he has a heavy UGA class schedule I got to dart to town for a minute with my darling 22 year old son who’d managed to obtain a queen size mattress and box springs for me. We’d planned to eat lunch together but both of us are constantly distracted by projects, the eating time gets away from us, so we blew that today. Even as a kid I’d have to remind him to eat, he much preferred sports and other activities to sitting and eating.

It was a nice interlude, his drama free life and interesting plans for the future contrasting with phone calls from a mental hospital and a jail situation for two of my other kids. Tomorrow we dive into four soccer practices, another positive time with the kids, something we all really need at the moment.

Because life goes on for us through our many ups and downs.