There is Hell
I held my daughter tight for a moment, then held her away from me and studied her face, her eyes, what she was doing with her mouth, considered what she might be thinking, considered what she might tell me the first time she has put some of the bits of information together that she's been taking in, considered what that meant for her to be able to take that in, considered all those children who lack something vital to taking in and processing information, considered what it would be like to be one of those other parents who stare at their child and wonder why they don't respond to them, why they can't, or maybe when they will, if there's a cure some day.
I studied my daughter and was grateful to have a life here that is free in a way, free to raise her our way, free to have this time in a day allotted for her, free from tyrannical things like dictators and regimes and oppressive 'religions' and free from a demanding prison-like job, or wife, or mother (or mother-in-law.) Free from my own self-imposed misery. (For now... that one I fear is fast-approaching.)
I ran across a seven month old article (seven months old, like my daughter) describing the horrors of North Korean "total control" camps. I read about tortures and imagined them happening to me, albeit briefly, and wondered at how I was complaining hours earlier about my 'difficult' life, a life rife with dispiriting things like talking to people, helping people, planning about ways to help people learn, helping people become better people, and challenging people to learn about the hardest working, most intelligent version of themselves. (I don't know how I survive such terrors of the soul, but I get by.)
Anyway, I came across what I first thought of as a sensationalized story, one that had obviously been built up, magnified, fabricated, even, because I obviously did not want to take it for face value. The story of the woman in the camp who impossibly bore a child in the midst of Hell and was then forced to hold the newborn, face down, in water, until it stopped living.
If anyone is reading this, perhaps a moment.
What was that woman so afraid of at that moment that she followed through with this command she'd been issued? Perhaps this is why I didn't want to believe that this was something that happened in our time, on this planet. I read soon after about a person in a camp who tried to commit suicide by biting through their own wrists. They passed out before they met success, and failed to die, and later escaped and told these stories so I could know about them. This is what I think of as I simultaneously write these words and hold my seven month old.
I hold my daughter tight for a moment, then hold her away, studying her face, her eyes, her mouth. I wondered if some day she would be able to do something about this sort of world that we live in. I researched (googled) just what it is that the world is trying to do about such places. Sanctioning food rations, because they (this regime) does not deserve anything (food) from us (the overworked, the over-busy, the safe.) Dennis Rodman used to go visit, but I don't think the camps were discussed. Basketball diplomats can be selfish like that.
What could she do? What would be required, what character must my baby possess to fight Hell and Evil? What is it that I lack that allows me to do anything but my usual?
Maybe I just won't tell her about the camps, not even when she's older. Maybe it will be a secret and I will pretend that the world we live in is a good one. Maybe I will try to protect her from ever feeling sadness, or pain, or shame, or remorse, regret, hunger, weakness, ridicule, worry. She has just finished being fed some pureed green beans. She is content now...why would I want anything less?
I will continue to share some of the happiest and purest moments with her as I continue to think silently on the woman in the camp who was afraid and killed her minutes old child because there was a gun to her head. I didn't think that people, either party, were supposed to operate like this. Maybe they don't. It was fabricated and sensationalized, made to shake one to the core, made to initiate large-scale social action and response. No such thing, a response like that.
If Hell was found to exist, and others were suffering in it, would we allow it to be, as long as we were 'technically' safe from it?
I guess we would. We will watch others combat evil on television and cheer on the superheroes that save us. Superheroes, from comic books. I like those movies. They are fun.
Some day, when she's old enough, I'll watch those with my daughter. And that will be that.
