An Apology to my Daughter For All the Wrongs I Have Not Yet Done - Part 2

Our princess has long, flowing tresses - as all good princesses ought. They follow behind her in a frazzled bun, pointing the way from which she had come. Look! A corner store! Hurry! The red hand is flashing! Feed the fish! Brush the cat! Don't walk out that door... we're not done here yet.

But when the cat was brushed and the fish was fed and the child tucked in safe for the night, Our Princess let down her hair and combed it out, oh so carefully, over the crawling scalp (scalp her!) and down the lengths of copper and bronze and hard iron gray, oh so carefully.

Oh Virgin Mother, so fair, so sweet

Why does your comb have such fine teeth?

For nits, for lice, oh me, oh my

'Tis not for you, but me, I cry.

When did the light at the end of the tunnel become the dime-store flashlight at the end of the sewer? And why? Be homeless, be unemployed, be broke, be miserable - what for?

Just BE.

An Apology to my Daughter For All the Wrongs I Have Not Yet Done - Part 1

Once upon a time there was a beautiful blonde princess who was not so beautiful, not so blonde and only a princess in the eyes of her own mother - herself an ecaped mental patient and owner of an opinion that was, perhaps, not to be trusted.

She had a few things, our princess. She had a signed print by an ex-Olympian turned artist. She had a bald cat which loathed men with a biter passion. She had a precocious seven year old daughter who was already adept at the use of irony and sarcasm as tools with which to bear the weights that Atlas had born, and foisted off on her. (Atlas went for a hoagie and never came back again.)

Where Did Atlas Go?

Food poisoning?

Hit by a car?

Mugging gone wrong?

Maybe he just got sick of it, grabbed his pack, stuck out his thumb and fled. If he made it as far as the Yukon, he could have missed that caravan of snowbirds heading back down to winter in Missouri.

Got a job as a dishwasher at Diamond Tooth Gerties?

Good thing he packed his mukluks.