Once a friend who had endured intense suffering... she had been abused by her step father, and gang raped... told me that those people began as innocent babies too. Her capacity for forgiveness left me speechless. She is right of course. No baby or young child is remotely capable of true malice. Whatever the playing field by the time we reach our mid thirties, small children cannot hate.

 

I say this in spite of the fact that when he was a toddler Lukas once slipped a canister over Chara's nine month old head, to see what would happen. She shrieked, which echoed loudly inside the can, spurring her on to yet greater decibels of indignation. It took time and effort to remove the metal can, because of the inconvenient direction of her nose, which we were intent on keeping attached.

 

It is a marvelous and mysterious quality of a child's skin to always come clean. We have had our share of escapades with ostensibly permanent markers that thankfully weren't. John actually encouraged the practice, by drawing our kid's inner organs on their abdomens as an anatomy lesson. I recently checked and there was not a whiff of evidence remaining.

 

If I were to try to articulate the inexpressible, in an attempt to wrap in clumsy words what has greased the wheels of my own marriage, it would tip toe into the realm of innocence. Perhaps it is John's innocence, which peeks out from under his intelligence and suave, allowing me to see the child within. Mix that with his unshakable commitment to following the Lord, which is the hallmark of innocence, and there brews an elixir that can antidote all the sullied blots that splatter our lives.

 

And like the slippery little bodies covered with black livers and lungs and kidneys, we can always wash clean.