And yet...one does not need a license to be a parent. There is no little framed embossed document to earn in order to roll around in a bed or the back seat of a Buick and get knocked up. Bam! We're pregnant. Buy the crib, buy the high chair, buy the diapers and animal crackers...a baby's coming. And so, anyone with a...well, you know what...can then assume the most important job on the face of the planet...raising a child. To be honest? I'd love to see a license necessary to become a parent. Haven't quite figured out the application process, but there would be one. It'll never happen, of course. We can't control who succumbs to impulse, to that extra wine cooler...or the wistful sounds of Johnny Mathis playing on the 8 track (dating myself here, but you get the idea). "You got protection?" "You on the pill?" "Um...no." WTF! "I LOVE you, baby." When I become ruler of the world, there will be a license to become a parent....somehow. I'll even make running over a squirrel a capital offense, but that's another story. And no one....NO ONE...with at least 10 extra pounds will be permitted to wear spandex. The world will be a much better place...I promise. But, in the mean time, we'll see squashed squirrels, over-stretched garments, and that young couple....he with his baseball cap on sideways, boxers showing above his loose, dark denim hanging around his thighs, wife-beater t-shirt barely covering his chains....she with her post-natal muffin top, tousled hair, and "Love Is Good Shit" tattoo...pushing a stroller carrying an ice-cream and booger-faced little chub-monkey that is theirs FOR LIFE! The joyful parents and little Tyler go for a walk. Where is that license...for me to be ruler of the world?
One recent night...or day...in the rural town of South Berwick, Maine...a mother...an unlicensed mother...stopped her car by the side of the road, got out, and dumped her son...her little son...in a ditch next to her car. She had suffocated him somehow. Imagine that. Imagine how she might have chosen...PREMEDITATED...how to do it. Imagine what he was thinking as he struggled and cried. Something had gone wrong somehow. Was he whining? Was he hungry? Was he just too much for mom to handle? Did he spill his milk? Did he want the toy truck so badly he screamed? Whatever it was, it was too much for poor mom. Poor unlicensed mom. What to do, what to do. What could have happened? I'll tell you what happened. A woman...one lost in a fugue of self-pity and helplessness...one lost in a moment of tortured, total narcissism...killed her child. And was that enough? No....she then treated him like a bag of McDonald's trash...like a full Buick ashtray...like an empty beer can...she dumped him out of her car. Refuse. Litter.
One of my colleagues at a hospital in Massachusetts...a quiet, easy-going woman....a talented social worker...returned from having her second child in just a few years. She looked tired, but happy. But what she admitted to us was that, with two small kids...two needy, crying kids, she "understood" child abuse. She would never act on those moments of feeling overwhelmed or jolts of temper, that is for sure. But she understood. It was a moment of honesty typical of her. And, as close as I can, not having had children, I understand. It is...appears to be...the most difficult and, again, important job anyone can take on.
Thank God there are choices. There are government agencies. There are clinics and hospitals. There are psychotherapists and pediatricians. There are crisis hotlines. There are options. And, so, what happens when a woman kills her little child and throws him away like an empty Marlboro wrapper?
Right now, I don't care. I know depression, personally and professionally. I know and treat people with incredibly ugly trauma histories. I've helped mothers with three kids, abusive husbands and menial jobs. These people are among my most admired, considering the pressures they had endured and the strength they mustered and the daunting choices they were forced to make. This woman? The one found at a rest area in her car? The one who took the life of a gorgeous little boy because it was just way too much work? I have no respect for her. No respect, no empathy, no tolerance, and no desire to share the air that my dogs and I breathe with her. Second degree murder my ass. Send in the Navy Seals one more time. She deserves no less and no better. Forehead.
Angry? You bet I am. I am so, so tired of this society's relative tolerance of child abuse and neglect...animal abuse and neglect...passive acceptance of domestic violence which still receives a tsk-tsk and a wink from our law enforcement...I could go on. And this woman...she can burn in hell in the same big hibachi as bin laden and Satan's hamburgers. They're both terrorists and murderers as far as I'm concerned. Why dicker over numbers.
And Camden Hughes? I wish you had been mine. I'd have bought you that toy truck. I'd have wiped up your milk. But that big golden retriever licking your face in heaven? He WAS mine!
