Bet I wasn't the only woman sobbing in distress on hearing the news of the autistic teenager who'd gone missing at the Victoria market on Friday night. Sitting having breakfast with my partner and son, safe in the warmth of our domestic happiness and health, I was unable to choke back the sobs as I heard the mother plea for assistance in finding her son. A minute later, the news broke that the boy had been found, and my sobs turned to gasps of relief. My emotional responses were instant and dramatic, but the boy and the man in the room, while sympathetic, were silent. But I know I was not alone, because an hour later I heard an interview with the woman who found him. He had walked all the way out to Balwyn, I think it was, and she saw him in the street as she was helping her own child to get dressed. He asked if she knew his mother, and she said she would help him find her, but then broke up in her own tears as she told the story. I knew exactly how she felt.
Is this the heightened emotion of my chemically-induced menopause? or is it the generalised burden of womanhood? or just a mother thing?
Monday, June 04, 2007
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3 comments:
All of the above.
Did you see Compass last night? About the London priest who cannot forgive her daughter's terrorist murderer. She went on a quest to interview other parents who had lost children and made some powerful and beautiful connections between parents who have experienced loss, those who haven't (but implicitly understand it), and the Pieta. I was in tears for most of the show, and almost converted to Christianity to boot. So I think your reaction to the lost boy was something deeply important - as PC says, all of the above.
meredith and pavlov's cat have beaten me to it..."all of the above", and in spades!
i have to confess that for me the combined effect is a little too much right now. its hard enough to manage my own "private" emotions, let alone when i empathise with powerful and "public" ones.
thus the newspaper stays folded.
i am trusting this too will pass?
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