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Against the
rage in our hearts, let patience, good teaching rule
A
couple of weeks ago, there I was. It was my cherished Monday
routine. A train to DC (usually late, but that’s another matter), an
early lunch with my daughter Elisabeth and granddaughter Charlotte
Rose. Elisabeth leaves for her office, and Charlotte Rose is all
mine until 6:30 p.m., when I dash to the train to come home.
News of
the sniper was everywhere — conversation, newspapers, television,
Internet. It was like the elections weren’t even happening.
Charlotte Rose and I always take a very long walk after lunch. At a
year and a half, she now shuns her stroller and wants to hold my
hand, pointing toward blocks that interest her as she pursues
leaves, babies and dogs. But recently we’d been staying indoors, and
my granddaughter had not been pleased.
One
week my daughter, her mother, tells me to resume our walks.
“You’ve
always said that safety is an illusion,” she said. Her eyes filled
with tears. She was pregnant and thinking of the children who lost
parents on Sept. 11, and thinking of the snipers’ rampage: “We don’t
smoke, and we use seatbelts, but this madness isn’t going to make
our home a prison one more minute.”
Even in
the dead of winter, there usually is much life in Georgetown. That
Monday the streets were bare. Charlotte Rose and I were both
frightened by the quiet. It’s the quiet of danger. Confused by our
solitude, she sensed it. An angry dog barked from inside a home.
Charlotte Rose flailed her arms upward, insisting I carry her.
Toddler
in arms, I — vehemently opposed to the death penalty — knew at that
that moment that if anyone approached to hurt the child I carried,
I’d tear him limb from limb.
Guiltlessly. And consider it an honor. A privilege.
It was
a rage unlike any I ever felt in my life.
I think
of myself as a person who would like to build community, a person
who wants to nurture both individual life and togetherness. I
believe in playing your role in life and in your neighborhood to the
fullest. I was part of the original group that gathered and
recognized the necessity of Women’s Way. I worked until the ninth
month of both pregnancies. I have worked fulltime throughout my
adult life. And yet, irrespective of all, this rage.
I
haven’t recovered. But the anger that created the danger, and the
anger the danger created have made me meditate on about the sources
of anger and abuse all around us.
Sociopaths are bred, not born. I know this having worked as a
therapist for more than two decades. A weird combination of rage and
rejection, sometimes coupled complicatedly with extreme, seductive
overprotection, produces members of humankind who are devoid of all
humanity, yet can fake tenderness with charm and authenticity.
We
think sociopathology is something “out there.” And, thank goodness,
for the most part it is. But there is a sickness indoors as well, a
sickness in families. I’ve never knowingly had a murderer in my
office, but I have worked with families in which one member takes
great pleasure killing the opportunities and hopes of those he or
she swears they love. What is called love is really the search for
dominance or dependency.
Children whose community compensates emotionally for what they lack
at home do not become sociopaths. But in the United States,
wealthiest and most powerful of all nations, we are doing a bad job
of such support. In l997, almost one million children were victims
of neglect and abuse (these are the cases we know about), and 3
million were reported to state protective services. One in 139
children die before their first birthday. Of our children, 11.6
million live beneath the poverty line, and every day 1,310 babies
are born who have no health insurance.
We’re
not alone in doing badly by children. Whole countries, whole
cultures have done badly by them. And are doing so still. We are
told law-enforcement officials are confident they have the snipers.
A victory for law enforcement and America has been proclaimed. Yet,
at the same time we are being warned that maniacs may well be
planning to blow up our trains, bridges and hospitals.
Neither
I nor anyone else is immune from rage. Let us adults be on guard for
it among ourselves and work to head off its birth in our children.
To adapt my grandmother’s words, The hand that rocks the cradle with
love rules and protects the world.
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