It was last Monday. A new work
week. I headed off to the college at 7:30 am as I do every morning. Tom left
the house around 9:00 am. The house was empty. The street was empty. The
neighborhood was empty.
My niece stopped by around 5:00
pm to pick up a dehumidifier to dry out the interior of her car. (I still don't
know how her car got wet on the inside, but that's a whole different mystery.)
We live in a safe neighborhood, or so we've thought for the past 21 years. We
leave windows open in the summer. There have been days when Tom's left the back
door wide open - not intentionally, of course, he just has other, more
important things, on his mind than locking the back door. But this was April
and the house was locked up tight. Tom left the dehumidifier outside the back
door for my niece to pick up on her way home from work in case she got there
before either of us were home. I was having a rare, get-ready-for-sandals
pedicure at the opposite end of town when I got the call.
"I
saw the broken glass, but I just thought Tom was working on another
project," my niece told me. "I was all the way out to my car before I
realized that Tom wouldn't leave such an awful mess, so I ran back."
As I listened, my niece
walked through the house. I was numb to her words: "oh my god... oh
fuck... sorry about my language... a knife on your desk." I don't know if
I said "call 911" or if she did, but I ended the call and my
unfinished pedicure in the same moment. Then I called her back. "Get out
of there," I told her. "You shouldn't be in the house." And then
I texted my husband.
"I know," she
said. "I'm talking to your neighbor. Did you know he's a cop?"
I got home through rush
hour traffic in record speed, but still Tom beat me. As I drove, I imagined the
worst: lost manuscripts, lost photographs, vandalized artwork. I saw my sofa,
rugs, furniture destroyed. Tom's new flat screen, a Christmas gift, gone. I saw
a ransacked home and I was heartbroken. I didn't, couldn't, wouldn't allow
myself to cry. Instead, I drove.
When
I walked through my front door, I released a few tears and a big sigh of
relief. There was no vandalism and the thief took very little - only what he or
she could carry in a backpack. He (I'll stick to the masculine, but there's
really no way to know) came in the backdoor and went downstairs. He rummaged
through our bedrooms where he found my prescriptions for thyroid, estrogen and progesterone
in my bedside table (on second thought, maybe the he was actually a
postmenopausal she, desperate for HRT). He found Tom's backpacking knife and
headed upstairs, armed.
My writing room was his
primary target. He left with both my laptops, as well as cameras, watches and a
number of other small items - we're still finding things we can't find. Then,
he/she unbolted the back gate and rode away through the back alley on my new
bike.
We were lucky. I won't
even list what wasn't taken, but as a writer, it was a wake-up call, a reminder
to back up everything daily, weekly, monthly. Ask yourself: What are you
willing to lose? A week's work of work? Could you recreate a week's worth?
I'd just sent my latest
manuscript drafts to a backup email the Friday before. A friend had also set
up a cloud account for my writing folders. Still, the losses are profound: all
the documents on my desktop that I'd failed to file - gone. All my photographs
that I'd yet to back up on CDs - gone. All my contacts, emails, addresses and
phone numbers - gone.
I know I'll be making
changes in how I do backups and in how I think about home security. I'm still
not willing to live behind an electronic fence, but a local sound maker
triggered when the door is opened, perhaps. And maybe it's time to consider a
new dog. A big, furry, messy, stinky, scary, loving mutt like Mozart. We never
had a home intrusion while Mozart shared his long life with us. I wish we could
have cloned him.
(Note: If you want to
be in my new address book, please send me an email at aw@arleenwilliams.com. Thanks!)
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