the cruel world

Warning: this is a pretty depressing post. But I think if I don't write it, I'll have a really hard time sleeping tonight.

Today my husband told me about a couple news items he'd read lately. Apparently a woman in Michigan starved her 10-month-old baby to death, after her ex-husband had beaten it until it was brain-damaged. Another woman in, I think, Georgia suffocated her 18-month-old and 6-month old children.

I can't even wrap my head around these things. How anyone could do these things to their own children is literally incomprehensible to me. It's beyond the capacity of words to condemn.

I almost wish he hadn't even told me; back when I was a journalist, I greatly preferred the features on cool people with interesting lives, or those who contributed great things to their communities, over the hard news that some of my colleagues preferred. I'm still haunted by a couple of stories I had to cover: a family of four dying in a fiery car accident; a baby killed by its abusive father, its tiny body found curled in a Tupperware container, for Christ's sake, hidden in an abandoned fifth-wheel.

I can only assume these women my husband mentioned today were suffering from post-partum psychosis or some other chemical imbalance or psychological trauma, rather than doing these things willfully. That doesn't excuse their behavior in the least, but it does allow me to feel desperately sorry for them instead of wanting them to be given some sort of archaic, slow death sentence.

After I heard about them, I hugged Ellie for a long, long time. I feel so lucky to have her, it's practically maudlin. I can't stop thinking about how cruel life, the world, people can be: and yet, the solid warmth of my child's body when I hug her to me; her laugh as I nibble her chubby arms and cheeks with gusto; the sun-dappled back deck cheerful in the sunshine; the quiet assurance of the giant blue spruce across the way; these things make life worth living. Perhaps for every horrible thing, there is a beautiful thing to balance it out. If not, we'd better start working harder to make it so.