The first involved a news item. I read The Times online, I look at all sorts of news blogs, sometimes CNN, but even then I can go two or three days without checking the headlines. Also Scott tells me everything I need to know so I am able to justify my ignorance. A few days ago I decided to check in with the world. It was enough to make a grandfather no longer wish to breathe, particularly if β as all the evidence seems to suggest β his beloved grandbaby was killed by his own daughter.
Casey Anthony is innocent until proven guilty, and the evidence against her is so far circumstantial. However, as David Rudolf points out, all evidence in every trial is circumstantial, and these circumstances are damning. Otherwise we would have no need of grand juries. She was nineteen when her daughter was born; I was nineteen when my daughter was born. All similarities, and I mean ALL, end there.
You might think I mean because I never harmed my child β I never raised my voice to her β but more than that I now have a year-old woman, a daily presence in my life, who is the embodiment of all that is good and compassionate and funny and joyful and wise. We have each other. That night, the night I read about a suicidal grandfather, I had my own very minor trauma.
Someone who reads the blog had sent me a, shall we say, critical e-mail. It contained two lines in particular that made me believe I am not, in fact, a good enough person to be writing a public blog and perhaps should not write at all. Two people I hold in very high esteem read the post and said I HAD to remove her name, which honestly confused me.
She used it in her e-mail. I asked if I could use her first name. How was she to know I was addressing her?!? By this point the conversation had gone on an hour, and in all that time my twelve-year-old son, Obadiah, had been sitting right there listening. I thought he might be embarrassed to be asked his thoughts on a tricky ethical question, but instead β and even now I can barely type the words β he just rose up in spirit, he very quietly began to speak in the most orderly, loving way, and every sentence was an unmitigated defense of me: as a person, as a mother, and as a writer.
