I remember my mother holding me tight while workers were down a well in Texas trying to rescue Baby Jessica. It was 1987, and my mother had not just me but my infant brother at home while every mom in the country held her breath for the 18-month-old Jessica McClure. I was a typical kid who wanted to get back to reading my book. I didn't know about a baby in a well, and I didn't care.
Two decades later, this morning I was the mother hugging tight a struggling kid while workers are down a 150-foot borewell in India digging to rescue a 2-year-old. What is it about being a parent that makes us that much more attuned to a family in crisis?
Before getting pregnant, I would never have wished real ill toward a child. But I wouldn't have sat with one tab open on my computer screen, watching for news of a child literally half a world away. I would have read the story, shrugged, moved on. I might have let pass a comment to my husband or coworkers about how sad it was. But that's it. I felt empathy. I am, after all, human. But nothing like this. Last week, writing a story for the local newspaper about a child suffering from neuroblastoma with a complication that has taken away the almost-2-year-old's ability to walk, and the family's struggle to make ends meet, I wept over my keyboard. When I pulled it together, I pulled my daughter onto my lap and stuck my nose in her hair to drink in the baby shampoo, and I nearly lost it again. I'm not pregnant. I'm not hormonal. But I read the story of 2-year-old Sonu, who is still stuck, 60 feet down the bore well near his home in Agra, India, and I clenched my fists to keep from crying.
Is this all part and parcel of being a parent? Do you find yourself clenching your fists until you find out another person's child is going to be OK?
Image: The Times of India
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