Daddy: "Izzy, come here."
Izzy: "Yep?"
Daddy: "Gimme a hug."
Izzy: (hugging me) "Why do you want a hug?"
Daddy: "Why did you ask if I like you in your note?"
Izzy: "I put that in all my notes. That's what you're supposed to put in a note. 'Do you like me?' and 'What boys do you like?' "
Daddy: "Oh. That's not what I thought you meant. You know I like you, right? How many daughters do you think I have?"
Izzy: "Nineteen?"
Daddy: "No honey, just you."
Izzy: "Whew, I didn't want to have to share my room"
I have said on several occasions said that I didn't want to be a parent but a parent I am and when I am asked to account for everything in my life (whether real or deathbed fantasy) I will know it is at least one thing I did right. I hope. It changes you, hopefully for the better. There are those who it changes for the worst and I know a couple but it does change you. Marriage doesn't change you...well, it didn't change me the first time round. I was still the same selfish prick I had always been but throw one or two children into the mix and you change. You have to. That person, that little loveable parasite demands everything from you and you give it willingly. (OK maybe begrudgingly but you give it)
And there is an unspoken understanding with other parents. A look perhaps, usually one of exasperation about new parents or a look of pride while you are out walking hand in hand with your kids. People joke about the hollering and griping that all of our parents did to us and we do to our kids but there are those rare occasions when you are all together on a summer afternoon and you truly belong.
I said it wouldn't write about this, I made a conscious effort to avoid it. But I am a parent, I am father and my heart aches for a family and the horrendous ordeal they are going through. I am likely to ramble and leap around from thought to thought but I am finding difficulty in making any kind of sense out of something that at it's best, is a senseless random act of violence and at it's worst, a cold and calculated act of cruelty and barbarity that couldn't have been committed by a human being and yet was. They say that all it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing. I don't know that I am any more good than anyone else and I don't know that writing about this in a half-assed blog will ever do anything but I felt I had to. If only to say to another father, 'I am so sorry.'
The Tori Stafford trial has been going on for three weeks or a month now. For those that don't know, Victoria Stafford was an eight year old girl from Woodstock who was kidnapped on her way home from school, raped and murdered. The details from the trial have been coming out fast and furious and for Canada, unbelievably graphic. I won't go into the details here, I don't have the heart for it. I tried to avoid reading about it or watching it on the television but it is the lead story in every local paper and every news program.
I remember when she went missing, everyone talking about it. It seemed that everyone I knew was hoping and praying for this kid's safe return, hoping above hope that she would be found alive. I wondered aloud if we would all have felt as strongly about it when we were younger? Of course we were still human and it was a horribly sad thing but we were all parents now and suddenly this was hitting awfully close to home. It wasn't just anybody's little girl anymore, it seemed like she was everybody's. I remember the the quiet deflation that was in the air when her lifeless body was found.
Two people have been arrested and charged in this case and one confessed to her role in it. Her stories have changed several times as to her exact part in all of this but her guilt is undeniable. She is either responsible for the child's death or worse, allowed it to happen. And that is what I am really having a hard time with. What in the blue fuck is wrong with you that you could allow this to happen? How can you turn off 200, 000 years of evolution that makes want to care for and protect the young? Ever wonder why babies and puppies and kittens and every other young thing is cute? Ever felt like you needed to feed/ cuddle/ protect any or all of them? How do you turn that off?
And that is just it. Normal people can't. So if they're abnormal, do away with them. If killing them isn't palatable, then their life should pay the forfeit. Life in prison should mean LIFE in prison. I am not so certain that they deserve life of any sort but we are far too polite for that kind of retribution in Canada.
I'm angry and so are many, many people. This kind of thing isn't supposed to happen in small town Ontario but it did. It has made many people cry out for justice...not the nice clean justice you get in a court room but the kind of justice that comes with the rough music of a lynch mob and I can't say I think it would be wrong if it happened.
My heart aches for this little girl I didn't know and for her father. I imagine her mother is going through hell too, how could she not be but her father is the public face of all this. He has shown remarkable restraint in the face of two very evil people. I have spoken at length with a co-worker, who assured me that were it him, there would be no need for a trial. It is a common sentiment and one that I imagine the little girl's father has entertained.
When I was a kid I tended not to do a lot of goofy getting in trouble type stuff because I knew full well that before I got home my mother would have known. By way of the original information super highway, other parents around my town. My mother would know exactly what I had done and be waiting for me. I hated it at the time. In retrospect, it was a very good thing. It was a small town we lived in and my mother looked out for the neighbour's kids as much as her own. It is what a community does. I still think it's a good idea. Rat my kid out and I may tell you to mind your own business in front of him or her but I will come over later and thank you for keeping an eye out for my kids.
What is the point of all of this...I don't think there is one. Look after one another, get to know your kids' friends parents. Look out for their kids and they'll look out for yours. I'm over simplifying I know but maybe something that simple can start a change for the better in the way we deal with each other... A hope maybe, a wish for some sense of peace for her parents. For some kind of justice...is there such a thing? What sort of justice is there for taking away everything a little girl had and all she ever will be?
I'm no authority on anything. I am not the voice of anyone of any importance but I am a father. Love your kids, do everything you can to keep them safe. Spoil them rotten, let them get away with too much. They are the best parts of you and the legacy you give the world...hell, let them maul the cat once in a while.
I picked up Izzy from school the other day and she was no different than any other day. We walked to the car and she ran and sang and danced her way into the back seat. We got the mail like any other day and headed home.
"Daddy, look at my owie." she said.
She had a large nasty blood soaked through bandage covering the middle of here knee, held in place by two tape sutures and two smaller bandages just below the bigger one.
"What happened!?!" I asked.
"I wiped out on the playground," she said. "I was running to get to the climber and I slipped on the pavement."
"That'd do it," I said. "Did you cry?"
"Daddy," she said in that tone that says you are the stupidest father on the planet. "Have you seen this bandaid? Of course I cried."
I told her that it should be cleaned up and re-bandaged. I was not allowed to touch the bandage in any form but I could re-apply the new one. It was a doozy of a scrape. A truly well skinned knee and her first. Were she a scab pic
ker such as I was, this would be a momentous occasion. Her first real pickable scab. Somehwere during all of this bandaid removing, Mrs. Narrator came home and I was relieved of medical duty. The dressing was changed and for two days there were lengthy discussions of pus and non-stick tape. The bandaid is presently off and has been for several days. The scab will soon be ready to be picked, I can tell she is dying to have a go at it."I don't feel it at all when I touch it at the edges." she said. That's just how it starts...
Two days after the knee, I picked her up from school and noticed a pink tint to her face. For a girl that colours herself on a regular basis, this was not an uncommon thing but something was different. It was too symmetrical. Like a racing stripe from the bridge of her nose to the center of her top lip.
"What the hell happened to your face?" I asked her.
"Face-plant on the playground." she said nonchalantly.
"Did you cry?" I asked.
"Oh yeah." she said.
We got home and I said "go show your mother your new look."
Izzy ran into the living room and stuck her face in Mrs. Narrator's.
"What happened to you?" asked Mrs. Narrator.
"I'm a hot mess." said Izzy.
I am taking solace in the fact that, unlike the couch incident of a few years ago, I had nothing at all to do with her falling on the playground. Father of the year here I come! Incidentally, I've seen the note Izzy gave to Mrs. Narrator. It doesn't ask whether she likes Izzy or not. Either my daughter thinks I don't like her or she thinks I'm one of the girls...
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