Leah sent along a pretty fascinating article (NYT: soul-sucking registration required) today about Bedouins in Israel whose centuries-old practice of intra-family marriage is now yielding some rather horrific birth defects.
My spirit really stumbled when I read about the father who, himself a victim of the mutations so common among his people, chose to marry outside his family and fathered two healthy children. Children he’ll never see, as he was born with no eyes.
This was one of those moments when you become acutely aware of being a parent. I’ve been trying, but I can’t even imagine what it must be like to never see your children. It’s amazing to consider a life without sight, to never have seen anything at all. No sun. No sky. No dry leaves blowing across a parched desert landscape. To never see your children, then, must simply be like never seeing all the other people in your life you’ve never seen. Your parents, neighbors, wife.
I don’t want to contemplate what my life would be like if I could never see Ava again. If I could never see at all again. To live for 34 years before seeing the most gorgeous thing in the world, only to have it disappear, would be too much to bear.