What Almost Made Me Cry Today in Fatherhood

The daily Google News summary of fatherly doings is typically full of death and misery—a machete murder, a snowmobile accident, Marky Mark producing a fourth child—but at least one tidbit today is topical and, with a bit of imagination, inspiring.

In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a New Zealand girl was found alive underneath the dead body of her father in a collapsed building. The 2-year-old is “pretty badly injured,” said the girl’s mother. “She’s bruised and she’s got at least one broken leg and maybe the other one as well.” Okay, so this isn’t really so great: Dad’s dead, and the girl’s two sisters are still missing, and there are no aid services or rescue workers or embassies to help out. Actually, it kinda sucks.

But, well, I like to at least imagine that dad’s last moments: A sudden realization that something was wrong, a quick hunt for the baby, an instinctive sheltering of her body as the building came down, a final last hope that, even as he died, the girl might still somehow survive. It’s not much, but in the face of tragedy on an unimaginable scale, we’re free to cope however we can. I choose to do so by inventing minor moments of heroism.

Anyway, it’s either that or read news that David Beckham helps his kids with their homework over Skype.

Update (8 a.m. Friday): Apparently, there truly is no good news coming out of Haiti. It turns out the girl was not found under the body of her father. The information was based on some kind of miscommunication. *sigh*

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About Matt

Matt Gross writes about travel and food for the New York Times, Saveur, Gourmet, and Afar, where he is a Contributing Writer. When he’s not on the road, he’s with his wife, Jean, and daughter, Sasha, in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.

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