Tuesday, October 2, 2007

A haunting face.

I've decided that some of the sweetest words I'll ever hear are:
"mommy, I want to stinky in the potty" and "I lub you too" and "do you wanna rock me (to sleep)?" My little child is the most wonderful awesome thing in my life. It's amazing how this feeling inside that I have for her just keeps deepening and widening and growing. Cheesy I know, but she completes me. Really. Before her there was me, and now there's me and her (and her daddy of course), but I don't see him as an extension of me like I do her. If she hurts I hurt, if she's happy, I'm happy. It's WEIRD. Like having a part of me outside my body.

There has been a little girl in the news lately, who was raped by a grown man -- who was audacious enough to film it and then show the pornography to others. This girl's face was plastered all over the media because the police were desperately trying to find out who she was so they could get her out of danger. In the film she was only three years old, and here's the personal horror: SHE LOOKS JUST LIKE SARAH. It threw me for a loop that I've been in now for days. How horrible that those things happened to that little girl, that awful look on her little face, and how strikingly similar her little face is to my own little girl's face. It has haunted me; I have dreamed about that little one. I have been so disturbed that I have gone into my little Sarah's room and crawled into bed beside her just to touch and smell and hold her so that I know that she's safe and alright and here with me.

Tell me, how in the name of whatever god we pray to, could someone be so horrible and cruel to a little baby like that? At age three, my little one is just now potty training and naming all the parts of her body. She shows me every little nick and scrape and bump for me to kiss it and make it better. She's keenly aware of how pain feels and what seems nice and what seems mean for other people to do. How terrible and terrifying it must have been for that child to endure those brutal things that were done to her. Will she ever be okay? I worry about her now every day, although I know there is nothing I can do for her. I am still haunted by the image of her little face, staring into the recorder, her little shoulders holding up a leopard print nightie. How sick I feel for her, and for every child who has ever suffered at the hands of an adult who should be protecting and taking care of her.

For now, my sweet little toddler is slumbering away in her bed, covered up and tucked in and kissed multiple times by me. I've told her I love her a zillion times since she was born, and if I had a dollar for every kiss I've given her since the moment I first saw her, I'd never have to work again. Here's to you Sarah, my sweet little girl who is okay, alright, safe and warm in your bed tonight.