The monster often has a familiar face

As a child, unbeknownst to my parents, I'd often spend all night reading books when I was supposed to be fast asleep. As I got older it seemed that I'd lost this "skill" and instead of being able to read through the night, picking up a book while in bed often led to me dozing within the first few lines.  Eureka! I'd stumbled upon a bonafide  cure for insomnia (not that I've ever been an insomniac--just a night owl most of my life).

Tonight, for the first time in over a decade, picking up a book to lull me back to sleep had the opposite effect.  After falling asleep too early for my usual bedtime on a Sunday night, I found myself up at 3am. In an effort to go back to sleep quickly I started reading The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.  I'd seen--and loved--the hauntingly sad movie adaptation of the book years earlier, so I knew what to expect. Or at least I thought I did.

For the first time in a very long time, instead of falling asleep from reading, I found myself having to put down the book so that I would not keep reading it all night long.  The story is not fanciful or a rare literary masterpiece in the traditional sense.  But what it is matters more than reading a classical Shakespearean tale.  The sadness of this story takes on a whole new dimension.  Not very many books dealing with child abduction and murder tell the story from this perspective. It's frightening because it's reality for so many children and their families. It makes you want to do more than just teach your kids about the dangers of this world that are sometimes disguised as the neighbor next door, or the kindly looking, familiar face from church... it makes you want to never take your eyes of your child. Ever. Because you know that just like Suzie Salmon, who was an intelligent, thoughtful child, looking forward to going to high school and all of the things that little girls and boys her age might look forward to--your child might have a very temporary moment where he/she trusts the wrong person, and before they can run away or even call for help, the monster disguised as the familiar face, or the friendly face, can forever shatter your child's life, and your world.

Real life horror stories such as those of Jaycee Dugard and the Cleveland Kidnapping survivors offer some insight into the horrors that child victims might face at the hands of their abductors.  But there are so many others who are unable to even speak of their horrors because unfortunately, they have not survived the monsters who robbed them of their innocence and their lives.

At the end of the movie version of The Lovely Bones, I felt some measure of satisfaction that "Mr. Harvey" had been struck dead--almost supernaturally-- by a falling icicle.  In some ways I hoped that it would be a very, very long time before anyone even found his body, and an even longer time before his turn in Hell was up.  But on the other hand, I hoped that, they did find his body immediately, because then Suzie's parents would know that this monster was no longer out there alive and able to hurt other children.

Like Suzie Salmon's monster, real life monsters often have familiar, or superficially friendly faces. It's a balancing act to teach children to be compassionate, friendly and confident out in the world, while at the same time (as my mom likes to put it) "maintain vigilance" against those who would attempt do do them harm. There's no easy way to deal with this issue as a parent. One just has to do the best and hope for the best in a world that still has far too many monsters waiting to prey on the unsuspecting.