My Own Maturity

In the silence of morning time, the grey skies have yet to give way to promised sunlight. I’ve already made it to the doctor’s office this morning for labs. Two vials of blood and a little pee are all she needs to diagnose my life on a single sheet of paper. Now I sit in my office still wearing my doctor visit clothes, half thinking of dressing down to my cheap sweats and a ratty blue windbreaker. But for a moment I feel kinda fancy in my new Carhartt jacket, good sweatpants, and a bright orange t-shirt. Looking a little like a retired snowbird looking for seashells a barrier island.
  
My bride is asleep on the couch after a goodnight’s rest. Coffees still in the coffee pot waiting on me after my fast. So I take a sip of that warm brown water staring out my so-called prison window. Outside the pecan tree branches stretch out like tiny little fingers begging for the sun. Don’t ask me why I’m feeling a little artsy. Maybe it’s because of the  inevitable disappointment I’ll get from my daughter about taking care of her pets. Or the fact I’m keeping a secret in which I have no answer. It’s a situation that I know what my heart wants to tell me. But that the world in its heartless cruelty would say, “Get over yourself”.
  
So I’m left in stress-filled anticipation to see what happens. Torn between the love of a child and their inadequacy to cope. Where the stern lessons of adulthood just don’t register in a closed mind. There I blame myself for not bringing them up the right way. Fearing that I either judged them too harshly or not harshly enough. But that is the conscience of a parent speaking again and not just another adult. So do I sit and wait, and see what course fate will take? Or do I involve myself in their affairs again, even as I question my own maturity.