A Different Kind of Gone

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

what if I have a boy and he grows up to be just like his father?” “He won’t.” “You don’t know that.” “I have some experience in the area, actually. I have two boys. They didn’t grow up to be anything like their father. And they grew up with their father. Your little boy, if you have one, will grow up with you. Babies aren’t born full of rage and violence. They’re born innocent. The rest they learn around the house, or it’s the reaction to some need they have that didn’t get filled. You’ll be a good mom. He’ll be a good kid.”

You avoid what trouble you can and deal with what can’t be avoided. It’s kind of like everything else in life that way.”

“What is this world we’re living in, Norma?” “It’s what we have to work with,” Norma said. “It’s the only world we’ve got.”

Your brain knows that. But your mad doesn’t care.”

“Feelings don’t really respond to facts.”

“People talk a lot about justice. They seem quite invested in it. But we don’t have a justice system in this country. We have a legal system. The two are not quite the same.”

“Free.” “That’s understandable.” “It’s like I forgot how it feels not to be afraid. For five years I was afraid and I didn’t even know it. Well. I knew I was afraid when something set him off. But I didn’t know I was afraid all the time. It’s like . . . when you feel something every minute of every day for long enough, you don’t even know you’re feeling it after a while. It’s just what is. And so now I’m not afraid and I totally forgot how that even feels.”

Never pick up some guilt that’s not yours. Bad enough we’ve got to deal with our own our whole lives.”

Maybe people are doing the best they can at that moment even if their best is really terrible.

“Nobody’s just a monster,” Norma said. “The worst person has something good about them. The best person has something bad. People just won’t frame it that way in their own minds because they like their reality in nice clean blacks and whites.”

“Pretty easy to carry guilt that should belong to someone else. Sometimes I think we don’t even know we’re doing it.”