I stay up too late. I am looking for meaning. I feel like an old woman rummaging through her things, longing for the people attached to them–
Tom’s chair
Ruby’s dress
The people I want back are mostly living. I want them to be braver or more honorable, kinder or stronger.
But they are not. So I rummage
For meaning
For hope
For the person I once was
This is my nightly vigil
My grief.
We talk short words
The argot of binary code
Words and symbols you know better than me
Girlchild
My other daughter
Wish I could keep you close
Through storms and sun and boredom
All the days
A reminder of things
Beyond my reach
One time in the same week I wrote a letter to someone and a poem to someone else. Both someones had behaved badly. My intrepid partner (always the English major) told me he liked the poem more than the letter.
Of course, I thought. Poetry is the marble colonade you hide in when followed by ghosts or splendor. A letter is an everyday thing. Too blunt to be art. But is any of this about Art?
No. Not really. It is about sanctuary and splendor. Borrowed safety and borrowed beauty.
And attempting however obliquely to suggest the existence of Absolute Love.
So I violated my own rule about my other blog– called etiology. I told myself I would keep etiology free of my obsession with grief and injustice and the anger that follows these things.
I once wrote a poem I cannot see myself publishing. Too painful, too personal. I once wrote a letter to C’s prison therapist which simply described C’s crimes from what his victims and witnesses had said. Just the facts, as they say. The therapist read it and said he read my anger.
Anger? I thought. That was just the facts. I wonder what he would think if he saw my angry letter.
build you a fort
of sheets.quilts
blankets–
counterpanes
A Comforter Stronghold
pillow masonry
fortifying all our flying
buttresses
around this cathedral
the artisans, all children
nobody hurt there
not allowed–
the very law of love
forbids it
and all the pain
of our collective
history
would unravel like a braid each night
healing all these grievous wounds
Shelter
Just a roof and walls around us
Won’t define us
Won’t be
Nothing but a house
Kept me safe
I thought
Kept us all
Safe
I thought
Wrong
Wolf don’t give no warning
Just blow the walls down
Just a house
Not my soul
Mercy take my soul
When the wind come through
Us all
Carry us
Home
Is crying
I would bottle her grief
If I could
Bury it
No.
But it would bloom
Pour it out
Like a drink offering
Like a grief offering
Like a broken
Bottle
Alabaster keepsake
Dowry, maybe
For a child, a baby
Stolen
From our memory
Of happiness
And its careful
Lie- constructed
Illusion
My little one wanted to go to the beach. His cuteness trumped democracy and we went to the beach instead of the park.
While there we witnessed a bullying incident I would classify as both assault and child abuse. A group of older children were repeatedly dragging a little boy through the water and pushing his head down under the waves. He was crying.
When I realized what was going on I yelled for them to stop and asked the people on the shore who was responsible for the teens? An older woman announced that she was and that the little boy was being justly punished for throwing sand into a teenage girl’s eyes.
I was appalled and shaken. In any other place I would have immediately called 911. Here, I am convinced they will not respond. I took my kids to our van and continued to eye the situation with the abusive family. I filmed the woman briefly and attracted her threats and fury. I did report the incident to the police but am unconvinced I did enough. I should have begun filming immediately and called 911 immediately. I think now that I should have waded into the water to physically intervene and asked the boy directly if he needed physical shelter. I should have stayed with him and insisted on intervention.
It was not enough. And now I will be forever haunted by a little boy, helpless among his own.
note-this had another name in the title, I changed it to a guy I do actually think is pretty heroic
By the time M was two she had a fully realized world of people she had created. They were and are vibrant characters. This past year she wrote a story peopled by punctuation marks. Also quite interesting.
I say this because she is a beautiful survivor. She was being abused by Charles when she created her first kingdom. These people we still love.
But she is haunted as well knowing that Charles continued to abuse her little sister for a long time after she asked him to stop abusing her. She assumed he would not abuse her little sister. She was seven.
I am haunted by the abuse as well. There is a wall in my life that signifies S’s solitary hurt. One night this week I wrote on it, first a memorial, then a Bible verse, then a picture of a cross. Then I got an idea. I realized that my children’s vividness overcomes evil. Jesus brings new life. So I painted a chalkboard over my grief wall.
First we wrote each other love notes. Then M drew Mr. and Mrs. Whiskers. They are English cousins of Harvey and we love their accents.
When she tells me about the Whiskers, I just hug her really tight. It is grace to see an ordinary resurrection of something as pedestrian as a wall.
Grace.
Here are some markers–I struggled with a sadness so strong when I was young that I frequently wished for death. God would tell me, hold on, it will get better. Your storms almost killed me. How many times did you tell me you did not love me?
When I was 17 I saw that dad was not the bad guy.
When I was 22 I realized that I would have to weather your storms to make wise decisions
When I was 30 I faced my monsterization-just like grandma and grandpa.
When I was 30 I heard you hurt me viciously and intentionally.
When I was 34 I faced your mental illness.
When I was close to 40 I talked to you about it. That did not go well.
For over 15 years I have weathered your vision of me–a monster.
I know you love your dogs more than me
You sided with a pedophile rapist over your grandchildren, his victims.
I do not believe this letter will reach you.
But it is the last way to say
I love you, get help
You need help.
I became a foster parent because of stories like Toryn’s. I quit foster parenting when I realized that the state of X was not in the business of rescuing the Toryns of the world.
I am not going to tell you what happened to her. Google her. I want you to read at least three articles about what happened to this precious little girl. Then I want you to think about several things.
What is justice for Toryn?
Where does evil like this come from?
Where does it end?
Can we afford to wince and look away?
Are you sorry you read about her? Was it a downer? Would you rather have watched a juicy episode of Game of Thrones? (Please don’t, by the way..)
Please understand me. It is always easier to expect someone else to take care of the Toryn’s of the world, but it is impossible to believe no one suspected anything was wrong in the life of a child who was beaten to death over the course of at least six months. What we do know is that no one saved her.
Let me repeat that again.
No one saved her.
As a christian I am as appalled by this story as most “normal” people–whatever their creed or belief. But I have some answers for these questions, hard, difficult, stay up and pray and fast answers, but answers nonetheless.
My answers start with Matthew 18 and end with a River and a Tree for the healing of the nations.
And in the middle is a Man dying on the Cross of history, the rictus of pain for a little girl named Toryn and all of us.
Scarred Savior. Scapegoat God.
Carrying Light 