i DO understand

I understand. I fully understand what you mean and what you say, and how they change, how they're different, how their projections of dreams and goals that seem to jump further and further from you with every mistake. I understand why I have never had a conversation with my mother without hostility and/or raising voices.

I understand everything you say is charged with something that doesn't involve me. I understand that your love for me is there, at the core, truly there, but every mistake is a chip off the wrong marble slab, and I understand how distressing even the tiniest err to a masterpiece can be. I appreciate being shaped into a lovely human by two talented and worth artists, but you were not sculptors when I arrived a rough block prism two decades ago.

You were not yet skilled marble sculptors when you first began hammering away at your joint project of me. I understand that your learning mistakes are frustrating for you, but imagine how frustrated I could be in return. Imagine the dismay you feel after chipping off a sliver too big from the nose: The vision you were going for, wasted, but think of how the art piece might feel to know after it was completed and glorious, that its nose was not satisfactory for its creator. Be careful how you treat your mistakes, because others might mistake them for theirs. Do not get mad at me if I turn out exactly like you shaped me to be.

I don't care what you were hoping for. I appreciate it, and I appreciate all the support, the help, the opportunity that has come to me because of your work. But be careful how narrow you set your sights. Because of everything you've done for me, to me, because of me, I will be spectacular, and I will impress you. Just don't set criteria for how. Trust yourself, trust your work, and just know that I will.

If you hope for better, I will get worse. You can impress everything you want onto me, but I will only absorb what I will. I can understand you and be considerate without having the same thinking and frame of mind. I can agree to disagree. Can you? Can you listen without interruption and without interjecting argument? Can you listen to what you're told instead of listening to speak? You've awarded me many skills, and I can never repay you for that, but you are always learning as well.

You have had your first draft. The grand performance unfolds as you had encouraged it. Learn. And apply your knowledge to your other projects.

I'm not your only investment. You have two other children who didn't have the luxuries I did. Invest in them as if they were just born. Whether or not they pale in comparison, art evolves as it's made, and again as it's perceived. Just because I fit your expectations at their age, doesn't mean they're behind. Help.Them.Catch.Up

How can you hope to model them like me and talk down at me at the same time? How am I the expectation and below the standard at the same time? What you say and do have to be consistent with how much you care. We can tell when they're different.

I understand how hard it is to be a good parent and be a kid's friend at the same time. I understand how hard it is to work and provide and be present at the same time. I understand, I understand, I understand. Just because I don't go through something myself doesns't mean I can't feel what you feel. You may no longer be empathetic, and maybe you can't be sympathetic, but I can. Children can. And later when you have more time to, you'll see how they've been numbed like you were. Wake up now, do it now, care and cherish and parent now. Plan ahead, of course, yes, but live now. Be our parents now.

I was raised by school teachers and classmates, and only by my grandparents when they retired. When you are with us, be with us. Your work is not your life. We don't measure love by how much time we spend with you. We measure it by what happens, how it feels when there is time. And honestly, all I know from you is heartbreak, reprimand, complain. If I never wrote letters to my wife the way I did, I would've completely forgotten about our little letters in the nightstand drawer when I was learning how to write. I have one of those letters still. Nowadays I wonder if you bothered to keep mine.

If I didn't save up money to go to Disneyland for Gradnite, I would've completely forgotten how we used to go to legoland, disneyland, the zoo, every year when I was little.

All the good times I can remember were before I learned how to lie to you to avoid punishment. Read that again.

I understand what it takes to sustain our lifestyle in our day and age. I understand the slavery to industry and I understand that it sucks. What I don't understand is how I could possibly want to be like you when I've nearly forgotten all the parts to love. I don't know who my own parents are, and I've lived with them all my life, seen them just about every day, and yet a crispy old birth certificate knows just about as much as I do.

How can I tell you I love you if I don't even know you?