I was working away in my office today and on the shore across from me was this woman of indeterminate age with a boy of approximately three years of age, I would think her grandson.
He goes around and painstakingly picks a bouquet of dandelions for her. Once he presents them, she refuses them. Instead she puts him sitting, holding the flowers, on a little platform my daughter created last year for meditating. I had placed a bag on it, weighted with stones until full, to hold the jetsam and flotsam I pick up off the beach. She empties this bag all over the shore and then places it on the wooden platform for the boy to sit on as she snaps his picture. He again offers her the bouquet and she grabs it from him and tosses it just as she had the garbage.
He kicks around the shore, disconsolate, as she continues to take pictures of their surroundings and then he heads off to the water and begins to throw all the rubbish she has tossed around the shore into the water as she continues to photograph him.
There is no interaction between them, the woman (a stranger to me once I check her out with my binoculars) might as well have been a stranger to the little boy, so obsessed is she in capturing The Moment© for posterity. This Hollywood moment only existed in her head, of course. The only real moment was when her grandson attempted to give her the flowers he had so carefully picked and she had tossed them to the wind along with the garbage I had so very painstakingly gathered from the very same beach.
Some people never see the important moments!
ReplyDeleteOH MY :(
ReplyDeleteI wonder if she treats everyone the same way, as an inconvenient obstacle to her definitive photos. Sad.
ReplyDeleteI wonder, will the effect of that rejection ripple outward over his life? Oh, how I hope not. So thoughtless of her.
ReplyDeleteplus that bitch dumped out your stuff.
ReplyDeleteTsk...insensitive beeeatch!
ReplyDeleteOnly excuse I can think of - re the dandelions - is that back in Yorkshire (maybe elsewhere too) we were told that they "make you pee the bed", so shouldn't be picked. No idea of the basis of that old wive's tale.
That's excruciatingly sad. It hurts my heart. Poor little boy.
ReplyDeleteAnd she never smiled once, either. I do wonder about the effect on the kid, he was totally downcast.
ReplyDeleteI like that bit about peeing the bed, but dandelions make great salad and wine and I know someone who makes jam from them (combined with rhubarb, never tried it, feel a bit bleurgy at the thought).
XO
WWW
What a disgusting woman.I can testify to the dandelion wine although its been sometime since I sampled that particular homemade refreshment
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing isn't it? She probably thinks of herself as a wonderful grandparent (if indeed she is) who provides a good example to the child and teaches strong moral lessons. Like a puppy, he'll probably pick another bouquet for her and, following her example, when he's done with it, he'll throw it on the beach or on the sidewalk or in his neighbour's yard. Sad. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteThis is too poignant for words and you have managed to do a grand job of it. Yes, there are such insensitive souls who are so full of themselves that everything and everybody else exist as necessary evils. Sad really.
ReplyDelete