Starved. Anne McTiernan

purged some deep anger that simmered all day like an active volcano, the heat getting more unbearable as her day went along, until she erupted at home more from the pressure building within than from any external forces, such as her child. She might have interrupted my piano play so that she could have some help in the tedious supper preparations. Maybe she was lonely and wanted some company or needed to feel that her child loved her.

      While in medical school, I learned about a pediatric disease called slapped cheek syndrome, so-called because a hallmark sign is a bright red rash on the cheeks that looks as if the child had just been slapped. I learned that it is usually a benign, self-limited illness, caused by a virus. In contrast, my mother’s slaps felt malignant, and their effects were lasting. Hitting a child is like a virus that spreads insidiously. Parents strike children, who smack their children, and the behavior passes down through the generations. My grandmother hit my mother, and my mother hit me. I made it stop there. My husband and I never struck our children, and we hope that our legacy of peaceful, loving childrearing will endure.