(no subject)

Day before yesterday, Mike was dropping some clean laundry in Jake's room, and decided to snoop around. His efforts rewarded him a little ceramic pot pipe.

Now, Jake is seventeen, and he does good in school, A's and B's, with good citizenship marks. He's liked by his teachers, and his friends' parents. He's never been in trouble with the cops, and he's good (mostly, for being the big brother) to his younger brothers.

I'm not saying that I'm enthusiastic about him smoking pot. We had a talk about how un-enthusiastic I am. But I'm just not willing to come down hard on him for it, either. I was never a pot smoker, and neither was Mike. Just not our thing. We don't drink or smoke tobacco, either. But Jake's biological dad was a daily pot smoker, and I think that it ruined him.

I've talked to Jake a lot about his biological dad's pot use, and about the alcoholism of his granddad, my dad. I think that, at Jake's age, if I were to try to ground him, he'd laugh in my face -- I'm never home, and he has his own car. I just don't think that we're at the stage where we can discipline him. I don't think that yelling, arguing, or trying to restrict his activities is going to change what he's going to do when we're not around. Instead, I've talked to him, earnestly, about how I've seen alcohol, pot, and other drugs really mess up people's lives.

He says that he has friends who smoke pot alot, and that he doesn't want to be like that. He says he doesn't smoke very much. He says that he'd never drive when he was high or drunk.

There is a point in your life, when you're a parent, when you just have to let go, and hope that you did a good enough job that they can make it on their own. I just don't know when that point is. In about 18 months, Jake'll move out of our house, go off on his own, and sink or swim. We'll still be there, to shout encouragement from the shore, and maybe throw him a floaty every once in a while, but it's gonna be his life.

God, I just pray that I'm not too horribly wrong.