Letters to the Editor
papabotts
Published Letters: 50 Editor's Choice: 1
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Cruisin in the "Socker-mom Van", nekkid?
[Read the article: If Britney Spears shouldn't be naked in front of her kids, what about me?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is just another sign of an overblown worry caused, as Cary implies, by an overblown media, paid to overblow the underblown to blow a little money into their coffers. Being new to reading Cary's wonderful column, it has not escaped me that many people write in already knowing the answer to their question deep inside of themselves. It seems to me our overblown media concentrates on things so insignificant and tells us that we need to be afraid of life in so many instances, in such a shallow way, that many are either perennialy unsure of themselves, or have lost the map to get to their insides where these answers they already have, lay quietly.
if seeing one's parents nude pushed kids, automatically, towards anti-social behaviors later in life, wouldn't all those offspring who's 60's, hippie 'rents dragged them along to the nudist colony outings be commiting cross country mayhem as I write? Wouldn't half of europe be raping and pillaging one another on a grand scale. Because isn't it all about the pervasive attitude a given society places on a peticular behavior, such as nudity? If we are told daily to see danger there, we will begin to see it. But I bet this woman, who is intelligent enough to read and trust this column, already knows herself, if she looks inside herself, whether or not her actions are right or wrong where her own kids are concerned.
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My Dead Daddy slept with Tuesday Weld
[Read the article: After my husband died of cancer I found he'd been cheating]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear Betrayed,
My father was a syndicated gossip columnist in the 60's, who died of Cancer in '67. I was four when he died. During my childhood and adolescence, my mother, even during her second marriage, portrayed my Dad as one of the kindest men on earth, and the love of her life. I even have old super 8 reels of X-mas mornings showing the hapiness that pervaded our home that I cannot really recall phyically.I later found out through some relatives that my father had fooled around with several of his "gossip topics", and approached my Mother about his imperfections and asking if it was true.
Admittedly, she winced a little when I asked her, but she did not hesitate in telling me that it was so, and that in his line of work, that beautiful women were throwing themselves at him with regularity. She also told me that this did not change her opinion of him one iota and that neither should it affect my own. Because, she told me, "despite the times he was away from the family that he may have strayed, there was no question that he loved us all, had our happiness as his paramount importance, (upon his death-bed, he even made sure to "give my Mother permission to go out, get remarried and find happiness if it was out there."), and after all, "he was just a man".
The one thing I do remember about that time is the smell of death yet the sense of love pervading the room as he slipped away into morphine dreams. I am now a 44 year old married man who would never cheat on his wife, all because of that "wince" I recall on my mom's face. But I still carry around proud feelings of love and respect for the good, loving, yet imperfect, man that my father was, taking the cue from my mother. As a man now, I wonder if I would succumb to the tempatations myself. Although I think I would not, I also think it wouldn't matter much if I did. I love my wife. she is "the one for me". but no person can fill every single "receptor" in the "brain of the human soul". If I strayed once a year, it would not erase the great love, respect and affection I have for my wife. I would perceive it as a shortcoming in myself, not in her. And because we have no doubt of the love between us, were she to find out posthumously that I had strayed, she would not only forgive me, she would understand and not let it make her doubt my love for her because "she just knows". And I bet that if you truly search the ledger of the life you shared together, that this knowledge is there for you too, in large, boldface type. As Cary says, we can NEVER know all the secrets of the person we wake next to day after day. But the life you had together should give you the answers you seek and where I would seek my solace, were I in the same position. Forgive, as we are all imperfect beings. Cliches are cliches because they are usually so. Good luck in moving forward.