For the Motherless Child
http://www.dirkpowell.com/music/mp3s/timeagain/Mother
Today, someone I love used a term so hateful and vile that it took my breath away.
He was reacting to the horrible news of a woman who had left her 7 month old baby for dead, for three weeks. I understand something of what led him to say what he did, and I would not ever censor him or challenge something as real as those feelings. But, as unfathomable as it is to imagine a mother could do this to her own children, as unimaginable an injustice it is to a child of any age, it’s not my place to forgive her, judge her, or condemn her.
I wouldn’t mind knowing, however, what in the name of God her so called “friends” were thinking that they couldn’t be moved to step in. I can’t help but wonder whether anyone one of them didn’t ask her how she was feeling. Nobody asked Andrea Yates, either. If a handful of average white men were to suffer but a moment of that hell called Post Partum Depression, I believe suddenly there would be a lot fewer dead or abandoned baby stories in the news.
I think the world might be better served by extending the culpability all the way up the human food chain, to the pundits and policymakers, to the Founding Fathers who themselves couldn’t bring themselves to free their slaves, to the Haves and the Have Mores that split us all apart, rather than lay it all at the feet of the person squarely at the bottom. Had she had better chances like I did, made better choices, she might more easily have thrown off the shackles that hold her in this horrible, dark place she might not even call her life.
Still there is the child. There can’t be any worse feeling than to know your mother doesn’t love you – or worse, to not ever know that she does desperately love you but is completely incapable of showing it or caring for you. Believe it or not, that happens.
Tonight when I am holding my own children close, I'll say a word of thanks that I can be here for them for however much longer I'm given. And I'll keep motherless babies, and the women who could not love them, on my heart.
http://www.dirkpowell.com/music/mp3s/timeagain/Mother
posted by Mando Mama @ 4:54 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I guess we just disagree.
I feel that when it comes to the poor, defenseless and innocent babies in this world needing somebody to defend them, it is precisely your place to judge the person who would take their lives.
Compassion and objectivity is a great thing. However, when it excuses the killing of a child, it is misguided, blind and downright enabling of such abuse.
...and one more thing.
At some point, the responsibility has to rest with the individual; not the founding fathers, etc, etc. My God, how do possibly look at a near-dead baby, left abandoned by its own mother for three weeks and say, "Hmm. Let's see why she might have done this. What was her life like? Can we help her?"
She's an adult popping out children. If she cannot grasp the concept of not killing those children, then she is not deserving of pity.
Jim,
Thank you for sharing this. I wish more people were as capable of expressing their views and standing by them as you are.
No one really can defend the killing of innocent children, and it wasn't my intention. I do know, however, that I am one of the Great Enablers, so you got me there.
My feeling is simply that there is so much violence in the world. I'm tired of it, and I do my best not to contribute to it. Does that mean I excuse this behavior? Certainly not. But I spent a lot of my time in the social services industry and I recognize that there were a LOT of ways for this not to happen. Ultimately, absolutely, the responsibility for her child lay at her feet, not the board of commissioners, not Children's Services, not her neighbors. But it bothers me that, if someone in a position of some capacity is able to intervene on behalf of the child, and it doesn't happen, they are no less guilty. And Lord knows, if I ever find myself in such a state as not to be able to care for my own children, or want to, I would hope someone close to me could get them out of harm's way rather than watch me slowly ruin their little lives.
As a complete self-centerd basterd that i sometimes am, whenever I hear a story like the one of the so-called mother who left her baby alone for weeks on end I wonder about those who say that I would be an unfit parent just becasue I am gay.
My 2 cents.
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