One-year-youngs don't understand hate. Don't get malice or violence. Evil won't be part of their vocabulary for another two years or so. They just see what's around them, and they take it in.
Six-year-youngs, on the other hand, do understand hate. They've developed enough to feel it. They know that churning deep down inside that comes over you, and the vision turns red and all you want to do is grab the kitchen knife and start slashing until the blood is everywhere. Then your heart beat slows down.
Thirty-year olds also understand hate, but they understand it better. They can live hate. Big hate, little hate, directed hate, universal hate. Contempt, disgust and revulsion too. From their own failures to the failures of others to vicarious failures, they have so many different reasons to hate.
However, six-year-youngs and thirty-year-olds can't get used to hate. They have to shout at each other and threaten each other and have one beat the other with their belt because "you don't talk back to me like that". And then after the shouting stops, both of them recognize that hate is not a normal thing.
One-year-youngs don't understand hate. But if you don't understand something, you can adapt to it. You can mistake it for something entirely normal. That hate is the way things are. That normal dinners consist of yelling and screaming. That on Friday nights daddy should come home with a slur. That every big sister has bruises across their backs and under their dresses.
One-year-youngs can smile, suck on their pacifier, and get used to hate.
And two years later, when the handcuff men take away mommy and daddy, and bring big sis to the orphanage, they'll find the three-year-old. They will hate it. And it will hate them right back with a smile. Because the hate will always be there for the three-year-old. To protect it from love.
