I'm as relieved as someone with only a tangential stake in the situation can be. Seeing pictures of her kids, young adults where Ingrid used to imagine children, getting ready to meet their mother again made my day yesterday.
And answered all my rhetorical questions about her hostage-ship: "Nirvana, paradise -- that must be similar to what I'm feeling right now," she said, seeing her children again. The CBC reports:
"The last time I saw my son, Lorenzo was a little kid and I could carry him around," she said. "I told them, they're going to have to put up with me now, because I'm going to be stuck to them like chewing gum."
She'll be going to meet with President Sarkozy of France, who according to the A.P. only found out about her rescue minutes before the news broke. Reports speculate on the perceived slight of this, which may shed some light on why Betancourt is going back to France (she grew up in Paris) with words of praise for the French and their support and interest in freeing her.
Interestingly -- shockingly -- the CBC reports that Betancourt "forgives" her captors. But she doesn't talk about captors in the article they ran here: she talks about destiny, about this being hers, about feeling sorry the pain caused to her family and the world for her decision to enter hostile territory in 2002.
"Nobody is at fault," she says. Which is not the same as forgiving at all.
But it's certainly good enough, the sense that destiny -- humbling and encouraging at once -- had caused her to go through this, and then spared her, for some larger purpose. If I were Colombian, I would vote for her.
George Gonsalves, the father of another hostage and a Connecticut native, was told by a neighbor while mowing his lawn that his son had been freed.
"I didn't know how to stop my lawnmower," he said. "I was shocked. I couldn't believe it."
Imagine being that man, mowing his lawn, minding his own business and finding out his son would be coming home.
Imagine -- imagine -- being the neighbor.
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