This morning I heard a police siren and ignored it. We hear them now and then as they head to some location in our small city. We live in the almost suburbs, a quiet area with four elementary schools on the same street I live on. Traffic is limited to 40K through the school area and only goes up to 60K farther along. This street has young families and older couples with empty nests. It’s not the street for turning up 20-something young women dead in a dumpster.
I wish I could talk to my Grandfather. He thinks the way I do, he doesn’t judge people too easily and he thinks well of everyone, expects people are basically good and care about each other. I’ve had some cynicism creep in over the years but, essentially, I still think the same way too.
My Mother is assuming the young woman was troubled, the type to be out drinking and screwing around. I don’t assume anything about her and I don’t feel like judging her or making any decisions/ predictions about who she was. I’m mostly angry, deeply, tremendously angry. I’m so angry I’m trying not to think about any of it too much.
I wish I could ask my Grandfather what he thinks about the world today, the “war against women”, the type of lives young women lead these days, the type of lives young men lead these days. I wish my Grandfather could tell me what he thinks. But he’s been dead a long time now. Cancer. So he can’t tell me a thing.
I don’t want to think about the women in my family, our experiences with violence against women. My own, personal experience. My sister who was raped and saved from being murdered and having her body dumped somewhere only because someone heard a noise and came to check. My sister has four children now, two of them are daughters. What will their future be like? In our family (my Mother, myself and two sisters) only one of us has escaped violence or predatory experiences by men. Not a great statistic for my sister’s two daughters. It’s not wondering which of them will be molested, raped or worse. It’s wondering if both of them will and will one of them be killed.
Like the girl, the young woman, in the dumpster today. Just three or four houses up from my house. I watched the police car parked to block the street all day. They left after 8:00PM. It was a long day to leave a car running with lights flashing. I wonder how they keep the battery from dying.
I don’t want to think too much more about it tonight.