Tuesday - The Twin

[ninanevermore]

Today on my drive into work, I was thinking about how becoming a parent has changed me in ways I never expected. For most of my life, I've heard people say whenever someone got arrested for hurting or killing a child, "They'd better hope there aren't any parents on that jury." I found it a curious idea that having a child would make you a less objective juror. As a species, people tend to feel protective toward children in general. Regardless of whether or not we have kids, most of us have little tolerance for people who harm them. Even if you've never had children, I figured, you used to be a child. An objective, child-free person could not be much different than an objective person with children.

But I was wrong.

The first thing this morning, before I ate any breakfast or drank anything to wake me up, I opened my morning paper and read about the the confession of a local couple who beat a little girl to death and dropped her body off a bridge into Galveston Bay. I've followed the story ever since I first heard about the body of a toddler, dubbed Baby Grace, that was discovered in Galveston on October 29th. When the Galveston County Sheriff's department released the forensic sketch of her, I fixated on it, in large part because so much about her reminded me of my own son: a fair-haired child who weighed about 30 pounds and wore size 8½ shoes. Someone emailed me a copy of the flyer and I printed it out. Holding it in my hands at the printer, it occurred to me that it would be silly to post it anywhere; every one in the Houston area had seen it. But I couldn't make myself throw it away, either, so I set it aside on my desk where it still sits right now. The little girl depicted so resembles my son that she could have been his twin sister.

I tried to give humanity the benefit of the doubt, and hoped that maybe what happened to her was an accident and that she had been loved and cared for up until the moment of her death. But a nagging voice reminded me that with an accident, you call the hospital and seek treatment for an unresponsive child. With an accident, you refuse to believe the doctor who tells you that nothing more can be done. Accidents rarely get wrapped in trash bags, stuffed into a storage bin, sealed in concrete and dumped into the sea. But you hold out hope that maybe people aren't so bad, at least until you open the morning paper and read, "The 2-year-old girl...was beaten with leather belts, held under water in a bathtub and slammed onto a tile floor...according to a statement her mother gave to investigators."* At that moment, your heart sinks, and you start to think that these people had better hope that there are no parents on the jury that will decide their fate.

Before I was a parent, I might have thought these two were disturbed and sick, and that they should be locked away and given the help they need. Now, I just want them locked away, and whether they get help while they are in there is of little concern. For all I care, they can be left in the general population of the prison, where my brother the prison guard tells me they would be made short work of by people who will tolerate just about form of depravity except for the one these two have committed.

At one time, I could be analytical and philosophical about them, and ponder about what would make a person capable of such a crime. But I don't really care anymore. Now, the only thing I care about is that if they capable of what they did to this child, then they are capable of doing the same thing to my child. With that in mind, I simply don't care to share a planet with them.

This morning it occurred to me that I am no longer the rational, objective person I used to be. Instead, I have turned into a parent. I once thought that the only difference between me with a child and me without a child would be the child itself. The difference turns out to go much, much deeper than I ever thought it could.



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* The Houston Chronicle, Tuesday, Nov 27, 2007

Comments

turned into a parent

[regatomic.livejournal.com]

funny how that happens,..o.o

Re: turned into a parent

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

I didn't expect the change to be so profound, though.

[noblwish.livejournal.com]

It's amazing the transformation that takes place once that small, wailing, red, wrinkled little thing pops out and looks at you, isn't it?

I hadn't realize how much she looked like your boy until now. *shiver*

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

The forensic artists drawing looks a lot like me 36 years ago; the photos of Riley Ann Sawyers look even more like my son:

Riley Ann Sawyers:
(http://photobucket.com)
E. Erickson:
(http://photobucket.com)

Now do you see why it makes me want to scream?

[adamant-turtle.livejournal.com]

I've been following that story as well...

IMO, I can ALMOST - not really, but ALMOST - understand a parent becoming upset or frustrated with a child, and killing them in a momentary fit of passion. But the things that were described in the articles go way beyond that - they were calculated, horrible acts that most of us wouldn't inflict on an animal, let alone our own child.

I hope these people are dealt with in an appropriate and timely manner (so that we don't go online five years from now, and wonder, who are these people, as so often happens...) Horrible to think that we have SO many tragic situations like this, that they all start to blur and fade after a time.

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

I used to think I could almost understand it. Living with a child that size and that age, I can't understand it at all. They are tiny and helpless and fragile - you can't comprehend how fragile until you hold one in your arms every day. You get frustrated with them, but the idea of doing them harm doesn't even cross your mind.

Beating someone to death is a very person, hands-on kind of murder. It's not like shooting or poisoning, which can be done from a distance: their hands had to come in contact with her flesh and they had to physically slam her into the tile floor (which is what killed her). It's not like suffocating someone with a pillow: they saw her face and heard her cries while they did these things to her. They felt her struggle, beg for help, scream, call for her mother (who was in the room but did nothing to stop the torment), beg them to stop.

No, I can't even come close to understanding this.

[jenelycam.livejournal.com]

OMG!!! That's HORRIBLE!!!! And you're right, having children changes EVERYTHING... I never understood how people could do those kinds of things to children, but now I keep thinking of how I'd die if something like that happened to my kids.

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

Before you have children, you don't know what it means to have someone in your life that you would be willing to kill to protect them, or die in their place if the need arose. You may think you do, but you really don't.

[jenelycam.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

Of course, what I meant to say was that you would be willing to kill for. My parents may have threatened to kill me a time or two, but not until I reached my teens...