She was about seven or eight years old at the time. She announced, her voice quiet and serious, that she had found out what her father did for a living.
They were a young family: mother, father, and 3 young children, who lived in a mobile home situated in a fairly rural area. Their home was surrounded by the usual trappings of active family life. In the yard were toys, dog and kittens. The parents both worked and were attentive to their children, the father perhaps even slightly more so. He was a young man of small stature, and of friendly demeanor, a nice guy, all who knew him would say. The mother worked in some health care field and the father would don his work clothes and off they'd go to their jobs. Her work uniform was white. His was blue.
On this day, with all the maturity of her eight or so years of age, she said to me, without asking for sympathy or understanding, that "Daddy kills animals. Every day."
And it was true. He worked in a slaughterhouse not far from where they lived. This quiet-mannered family-oriented man put aside his parental mindset of playing with his kids and their puppies and kittens, donned a uniform and went off to a place to kill animals. A man split into two different outlooks on life, one might say. But most of us eat hamburgers and sausage and lamb chops and somebody has to do the work for that, even if they have to let their little daughter know what it is they do.
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