family vacation at the hotel pool

family vacation at the hotel pool

fiction
edward w pritchard

The Father was trying to listen to the 13 year old daughter patiently explain the book she was reading about Plato's Timaeus and the Mother, still a beauty, watched disapprovingly; for the daughter should be playing in the water and attracting some young male admirers. The Father an engineer, highly intelligent, can not exactly follow what the daughter was explaining but he is proud of her and sees a missing part of himself displayed by her, intellectual curiosity.

The girl was excited and is talking about Plato's cosmology. The girl has not yet lost her childhood faith in her religion and is fascinated by the ideas of Plato in the Timaeus and wants to compare them to her accepted creation explanation.

At length, the Mother who has lost a little of her instinctual love for her only daughter, but is anxious for her to be accepted this year at junior high school begins to speak to her daughter.

"Julie that blond boy on the diving board is quite good looking isn't he?"

Julie, the girl, catching on quickly lays down her book and unwraps the towel from around herself, eases into the pool and swims toward the diving area.

The Father takes a brief look at his daughter who is developing quickly and remembers why he didn't want his only daughter to buy a two piece bathing suit earlier this Summer.