How do you begin to comfort a six or
seven year old who has witness a day filled with ongoing domestic violence between
his parents; one ending with his father sitting in back of a police cruiser
before being hauled off to jail; crying, "I love you son" from the top of his
lungs, while megaphoning to his wife and to the rest of the neighborhood
watching, "I didn't do anything. I am going to be away for a year. I am going
to lose my job " " his implication today but, previously and often stated loud
enough for the neighborhood to hear: "You are a b*tch!"
How do you explain to a little boy
who must by now be so confused, so sad, so angry, so frightened, so abused by
the abusive behavior of his parents with each other, whose affections towards his parents must be so split, that he
is worthy of love, comfort, safetiness?
How do you help him ease the horror,
the embarrassment, the anger?
I have seen him run out to the yard crying
a face full of tears and a heart as broken as a water jug so many times before.
Who is there to comfort him, reassure
him, love him?
--""..
For some reason, the previous day,
while looking up the song, Cuando Sali de Cuba, on Youtube, a link to the May 3rd,
2013, "Message from Our Lady's apparition at Medjugorge," popped up on the
playlist of videos. The part of the message that pounds my head as I revisit
the scene from out in the neighborhood is, " " DO NOT JUDGE --
It would be so easy to call this man
a creep, which so many of us around here think he is. It would be so easy to
call his wife a floozy, which so many of us around here think she is.
It is so much more out of step and
prompted by the "DO NOT JUDGE' part of Our Lady's message, to wonder what sort
of pain resides in the heart of this man that has driven him to so many
instances of domestic violence and to be the creep that he presents to the
world; or, what sort of pain drives his wife to be the floozy we all think she
is.
What is the blindness, the barrier
that keeps them from seeing that in hurting themselves and each other they are
also hurting their children?
What will the pain in their son's
heart drive him to be one day? A bully? A sociopath? An uncaring creep? An
angry man? The dance of anger takes so
many turns. He is already acting out some of the turmoil that resides inside of
him. He has already taken mail out of a neighbor's box. He is also pushing the
heavy chain link fence in an attempt to open the entry to driveway which his
mother had closed. He is crying out for
attention, love and reassurance. Who is there for him?
The neighborhood is at peace. But it
is a sad kind of peace.
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