I hesitated to blog about this, because it's been the subject of such hyper-saturated, sensational coverage already. But it's a parenting story like all the others we write about here, and it's one that, for some of us, has been hard to shake. Ever since then two-year-old Caylee Anthony was reported missing last summer, the media circus surrounding her young, probably sociopathic mother and her strange, clueless grandparents has been a grotesque fascination. Today it was confirmed that the remains found in a wooded lot near the Anthonys' home are in fact Caylee's, and I wonder where the story will take us next.
The likelihood is overwhelming that Casey Anthony, the 22-year-old mother, is the guilty party here, although her attorney has been all over the TV this week trying to suggest misfeasance or malfeasance among the local police. Even if she isn't guilty of the child's murder -- or of covering up her accidental death -- her actions in the month between Caylee's disappearance and her reporting it to authorities are tantamount to a crime. And crimes against children, always awful, seem especially unthinkable somehow during the holidays.
At the Unitarian church where I go on Christmas Eve, the service focuses on the nativity story. Unitarians are not all Christians (I don't consider myself one), but this time of year we are reminded to think about the miracle and gift that each child's birth embodies. There's one line from the service each Christmas Eve that comes from a Unitarian writer, Sophia Lyon Fahs, that reads, "each
night a child is born is a holy night." Every year when I hear that statement it brings tears to my eyes, whether in gratitude for the two children I have, or in sympathy for friends battling infertility, or mourning for my own pregnancy losses. This year, I imagine I'll think about children like Caylee Anthony, or Adam Walsh, or any of the other children whose lives were ended far too young and violently. May they all rest in peace.
Related:
Adam Walsh's Murderer Found
