Monday, December 29, 2003
Once a family of 3 went to Walt Disney world. The wife and mother thought it would be "cool" if she could tell her sister and her co-workers that she had gone swimming with sharks. She told her husband that she wanted to do it, and he said that he would too, but only after they had found someone to take care of their daughter.
The wife/mother screwed up her face angrily and proclaimed that the daughter was going to swim with the sharks too!
The daughter, a tiny blonde girl of scant years, said what any NORMAL person would say when told that she was going to swim with sharks. She said "I don't want to". The scrawny mother, whose face was already twisted into an angry scowl, began to berate the child loudly, in public, in front of other people who were nervously preparing to enter the water, but who had left their children in the custody of DisneyWorld employees.
To everyone's astonishment, the angry mother shrieked that ".......no child of mine is going to be a goddamned coward, and no child of mine is going to get out of swimming in the water with sharks because she was too goddamned chicken." I told my ex-wife to stop her misbehavior immediately, and to apologize to our daughter, to which she replied "....You go to hell and take her with you!!" Strapping on her wetsuit, she proclalimed "I'M going to swim with the sharks!!!" I calmed her down, and spoke with our daughter, assuring her that she DID NOT HAVE TO SWIM WITH SHARKS". I told her that I would stay with her while her mother swam with the sharks. I told her that if she DID swim with the sharks, it would be an important accomplishment for her personally. I also told her that she could tell her friends that she had done so.
We finally agreed that she would swim, as long as I was right behind her to defend her from the sharks which might sneak up on her from behind. If she was going to swim with sharks, she wanted to SEE where the sharks were, and she wanted any blindspots covered. (A VERY smart girl!)
She and her angry mother swam in front of me. One shark of about 3 feet in length suddenly swam between my daughter and me, and I instantly thought about how wise she had been to have been concerned about being attacked from behind by a shark. When we all got out, my daughter was blue and shivering. The water was very chilly. I gave her some towels, bundled her up hugged her, and got her warm. Her mother got dressed and was waiting impatiently for us.
She never apologized to our daughter for her outburst of rage and profanity, and never congratulated our daughter for having conquered her fear.
I have never forgotten how cruelly and contemputously that mother treated her daughter that day, and there were many more days like that before that day, and there were many more days of cruelty and contempt in store for my daughter from her mother.
I am saddened that I'm not there to protect you from your mother's instability, insanity, cruelty, stupidity, and just plain malice and resentment.
Amy, if you can read this..............never forget that I love you, and always hold on to that. The way that we both expected life to be has been destroyed, but life has not been destroyed, and love lives forever.
Bub (still ready to grab that shark)
