I don’t know whether to call this a horrible or wonderful story. I’ll focus on the positive and say it’s wonderful because in the end a few people reacted with humanity towards a tiny baby who’d been abandoned and tossed in the trash. But like I said, we’re not focusing on the bad part today. Let’s just be happy that there was a happy ending.
Thanks to the Boston Herald for bringing this story to light:
The abandoned baby boy of a “scared” young mother was shivering in a trash-strewn alley when, in a miraculous stroke of luck, neighbors heard his desperate cries, one of his East Boston rescuers recounted yesterday.
Deysi Vargas said she was preparing for bed when her brother and her husband heard the baby’s cries. The three followed the tiny wails to the alley below, where they spotted the naked infant lying alone amid the trash on Monday, garbage night.
The horrified good Samaritans sprang into action: Vargas’ husband ran to alert firefighters at a nearby station and she raced inside to get a blanket that she tossed into the alley, which runs between Saratoga Street triple-deckers.
Then, because there was no way into the alley from the street, her brother climbed out of her first-floor apartment window and lowered himself down. He stayed there with the child until firefighters were able to tear down the barrier.
When he was carried out of the alley at about 10 p.m., Vargas said, the baby appeared unharmed.
“He looked fine,” she said. “He was shivering. . . . I started crying when I saw him, ’cause he’s just a baby.”
I love that line because it says it all. She started crying when she saw him “’cause he’s just a baby.” To me, that seems like a proper response to a child in need, a child in mortal danger.
Believe it or not I find myself feeling sad for the person who abandoned the baby because to do something like that you have to be so far gone, so dark, so hard to reach.
There are those who crawl out of windows to help babies. There are those who cry at the sight of babies in trouble. And there are people who leave babies in trash heaps in alleyways. Those who crawl out of windows deserve our praise. Those who don’t need our prayers.
