by Bob Duden

Created on: October 17, 2009

When lines are drawn in the sand and an army of lawyers line up with two parents on the battlefield of divorce, it is usually the children that fall into the cross hairs of the sniping combatants. A judge may be the ultimate decider of property and progeny but it's the parents fighting over property that usually puts the progeny in the middle. Cooler heads would say this is avoidable but, the children often become just pawns in the fight, caught between the two pillars that once delineated their family, Mommy and Daddy.

Twenty one years washed down the drain with nothing to show for all that time except an empty void in a life otherwise spent holding fast to the straight and narrow. Wedding vows were broken and a wife left for a new life, leaving behind two young girls. A marriage was destroyed in a fortnight and the fallout took those young girls on a roller coaster of emotions that would alter their outlook forever. Daddy tried to keep it together while Mommy made appearances and promises that they would have a better life someday. Someday comes, two years later, and Mommy takes her daughters while the lawyers take their cut. A divorce is completed but the battle of wills will continue for the hearts and minds of those two little girls. The years roll by and the relationship between Daddy and his two little girls unravels right before his eyes. Where there is deceit and deception, there is usually a toxic poison tossed into the crossfire. The battle for property long done, the war for the progeny never ends. Somehow the children are still in the cross hairs.

Years go by and a daughter gets married. She tells her father he cannot come to her wedding unless he brings a wallet full of money. There's a price to be paid for the glory of walking her down the aisle, Mommy said so. There is no money that can solve this problem. A daughter believes that unless her father pays for her wedding he doesn't have a right to attend? Having watched the lawyers and the judge carve up his life's accumulations and dole them out, having to start all over again after twenty one years and not building up a big enough pot of money to satisfy the daughter's desire, Daddy doesn't get to go to the wedding. So it is no longer Mommy and Daddy yelling at each other. The fallout is complete as the poison continues to spread and a relationship that started with diapers and birthday parties, degenerates into a well of nothingness. Daddy's little girl is just another victim of the carnage, caught in the crossfire.

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