Earlier I was writing this long and complicated entry I was going to share with you guys today.  It's in my drafts, waiting to be edited and shared and dissected.

Several things happened, in no particular order, which made my mind wander elsewhere:

1.  It's been really cold here today.  We had some very cool snow flurries.  Snowish!  I can't think in snow.

2. I came across this thing where you find out whether your cat is plotting to kill you.  Apparently Miss Gracie is plotting to kill us only about 85% of the time.  I suspect it could be more, but she is too busy sleeping or plotting to Hot Carl us while we're sleeping (why kill the source of sustenance and nourishment when you can just defile and savage them instead, right?).  Do you want to know if your cat is definitely plotting to kill you?  Get thee to Is your cat plotting to kill you?

3. I was also going to write about my prenatal yoga class and becoming one with the universe and stuff, but then this morning I saw this sad story on the Washington Post (subscription for today, sorry about that) about some detectives holding a funeral for a baby they found abandoned inside a trash bag (the third such case in a short period of time) and it hit me really hard.  One of the detectives was quoted as saying that the baby was "a little girl no one loved".  Her mother was charged with murder, as she ought, I suppose; but basically no one was excited about this little person entering the world.  No one cared to give her a proper burial, except for these caring men of the Prince George's police department. 

After having gone to this loving class taught by my friend Kat –whose class is very nurturing and like a loud, perky cheerleading  paean to natural birthing and to mothers and to babies– where all the moms in attendance looked happy and, if not totally ready to be mothers, at least excited to be pregnant and to prepare for their births in our little kind-of-affluent niche of the world; and then collide in the morning with the grim reality of knowing that there are mothers out there who are willing to throw their newborns away in a garbage bag, my mind became numb.

I am not sure I want to understand.  I don't know what the words are that anyone can say to anyone else in those circumstances, except that those circumstances happened and a tiny infant was left for dead instead of being turned over to a loving family or someone who cared for her.  The only bit of happiness I can glean from all this is that while some may criticize the police and resent them with seething rage for doing their job or not, they are often the only rays of light that shine bright in a victim's life, however brief.

4.  I am grateful for our policemen and other civil servants.  Are you?

18 Nov This entry was published on November 18, 2008 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Laundry List. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.