Sunday, October 08, 2006

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Guilt.

DD1 showed up this weekend. Don't get me wrong, I adore all five of my children. I carried each one of them tenderly under my heart for nine freaking months, gave birth without benefit of any pain management (if I had it all to do over again...), loved them, cuddled them, clothed them, educated them, put up with them and their weird growing-up pains.

Nowadays, I find myself paddling in the deep end of the testosterone pool. I live with three male humans, three male dogs, and the one daughter still at home is either at work or out with her friends.

Boys are much less complicated than girls.

Admittedly, DD1 has had a lot of problems in her 24 years of life. She was so difficult that she was asked to leave the home when she was 17. She is beautiful and brilliant. Musically gifted, intelligent, charming (well, sometimes). Suffers from clinical depression, anxiety attacks (as does DD2), and who knows what else. Carries an almost complete pharmacy in her purse. She also carries an enormous chip on her shoulder, never happy, never satisfied. Most of her conversation centers around her martial arts dojo, her shrink, her classical guitar-playing business, her emotional pain, her money problems, and how her parents have let her down (with a corresponding dissertation on how much her friends and their parents show their love for her).

DD2 has remained in the home, sort-of gets along with her parents and remaining siblings, works full time, has a totally different personality from her sister. Also beautiful and gifted, also mercurial, also charming, also chemically dependent (necessarily so, trust me), loves clothes and make-up, but more independent and, in a lot of ways, more mature than DD1. Responds to her older sister's list of woes with the curled lip of scorn and a few choice words of the kind that I would never have said in front of my parents when I was growning up.

This having been said, I really cringe when I have BOTH of my daughters under my roof at the same time. Like this weekend.

Oh, the tension. And oh, the guilt.

Any more wine in that bottle?

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