August 8, 2012

Hereditary Misanthropy

My son's sandcastle is in ruins -- Constantinople after the Fourth Crusade. His "friends" succeeded the sack, deaf to his wails for mercy.

I can only look on with apathetic anticipation, knowing that eventually the tide would have done -- wholly apathetic itself -- what his peers' malice accelerated.

I shouldn't allow the symbolism to move me this way. But that doesn't stop me. My son is back at the house now, demanding another encore of some animated distraction or another.

I'm busy down at the beach, rebuilding the noble crenellations and mighty parapets of his sandcastle by twilight, as the tide tiptoes closer.