point of reference

Highlighting the news lately is the story of the two girls, ages nine and ten, who were stabbed to death in a park in a community just north of Chicago.

For much of my life I would have been angered by the news, but to be honest, I would never have given it much more thought once I'd heard it. I couldn't understand how people could get worked up over the news, albeit incredibly sad. I didn't understand why people would get so feverishly angry, so hostile, so passionate in their hatred and loathing.

I didn't understand because I didn't have a point of reference.

I have a nine year old daughter.

I know, right here, right now, not in some distant memory or second hand through other families, how nine year old girls dream and laugh and play and fight and cry and laugh some more, and talk about boys, and I can look at my daughter and see another little girl, so much like my daughter, I'm certain of it, and this other little girl-like-my-daughter laughs and dreams and cries and fights and talks about boys no more because of the most villainous, heinous, evil on the planet.

And yes, because I now have a point of reference, I am passionate in my anger and my tears for two little girls whom I never met and likely would never have met even had they lived.

Perhaps there is the slightest solace for me in the fact that it appears that the devil incarnate who ripped the lives from these girls was the father of one of them. This is solace for me, a father, because it would mean that it wasn't some random killing by some freak who chooses his victims randomly.

By the same token however, it is even more unconscionable that a man could do something like this to his own child.

I attended my children's elementary school concert this afternoon, and as I smiled the biggest smiles ever at my daughter (who smiled hugely back to me), I was of mixed emotions. I was proud and incredibly happy for my children, but I also wondered if there was a concert somewhere, much the same as that which I was enjoying, that was now missing two beautiful little girls.