Wide-Eyed-Blind

 

It’s not a common story by any means, but when we read about a parent -- especially a mother -- going ‘round the bend and killing her child or children, it gets our attention because it is the antithesis of being human. A recent such incident was in a small eastern Colorado town. A man came home to find his son and step-daughter drowned in the bathtub and his 32-year-old wife with her wrists slashed, thought not fatally. He told police she’d been under stress for some time. He also said, "We take comfort in knowing that Grace and Gabriel are together right now, in the loving arms of Christ."

So often, that is the public response, because that’s the best excuse they can come up with to themselves for not exploding in unbearable pain and rage. It doesn’t do much for the children, however, whose young, innocent lives are drowned in a flood of pain and rage.

This issue came to mind with a visit from a neighbor. This woman lives with three children in a trailer on a ridge down the canyon. She’s always polite when I encounter her on the road; she always carries herself with dignity. So when she stepped out of the back seat of an unfamiliar sedan that had negotiated up our driveway, dressed in her Sunday best, I was polite, too.

As I suspected, she was selling god ala the Jehovah Witness plan. I thanked her for coming but declined. I told her that I was on another plan. She stayed with me, averring that according her lights, if I got it -- meaning life -- right, I could live forever. Hmm, I thought, that’s not on my plan, at least not living in this body, on this planet, forever. Maybe if I’d gotten the offer when I was inhabiting a pre-thirty body....

Except that I believe I have more to offer than wide-eyed-blind adherence. I can’t imagine that I was born with these extraordinary faculties of reflection and imagination, and that I was supposed to turn them off to follow sayings in a book. I wouldn’t be living my life fully, or contributing all that I have to give.

My bassett-eyed preacher said I was being given the same opportunity offered to Adam, to live a pure life. Pure, maybe, but without knowledge? I don’t think so. I’ll keep nibbling on the apple, living this plan that includes death, pain, and insanity, because the hunger to explore with my mind is insatiable.

We could have talked for hours, without hearing the other. Instead, in polite fashion -- which is an essential of any good plan -- we parted ways.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.

 

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