A Mommy Story

Our car was broken into last night.

Actually, broken into isn’t quite the phrase. Nothing was broken. It seems that someone forgot to lock the car door – an extremely rare event with me, Queen of the Double-Checked Locks residing at this home – and on that particular night it just so happens that someone was walking through the neighborhood checking to make sure everyone locked their car doors.

Yeah, whatever. I don’t think the odds of it happening were really all that low.

Truth is, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone is walking through our neighborhood double checking door locks every single night. You’d think we lived in the wild west, and not a middle-class suburban subdivision. But this is becoming a way of life around here.

When we first moved here (we were the second completed house on our block), our car was broken into in that literal-smashed-window kind of way. Sort of a welcome to the neighborhood, if you will. We began leaving the front lights on all night to dissuade nocturnal visitors.

Then in 2006, just days before I went to my first Blogher conference, we came home late one afternoon to find our living room window smashed, our entire home rifled through, and everything of value gone. At that point we installed a security system and took extra care to keep everything under lock and key.

And now another car was looted. I’ll be the first to admit that an unlocked car is just asking for someone to open the door, but in the hundreds of days our cars have sat in our driveway, only one night (to my knowledge) has the door been unlocked.

Thankfully, Aaron had recently cleaned the car (read: removed a lot of junk), so there was little of value to be found. Some spare change and a dead cell phone from 4 years ago is all they took we think. And extra thankfully, Aaron’s iPod and wallet were not in the car. He occasionally forgets them, although I think this served as another wake up to check all locks and remove all valuables before exiting the vehicle. (See? I told you I was the Queen of double-checking locks.)

And while I am grateful little was taken, I’m again left feeling angry. Three thefts in four years. The people who do this give me little hope in mankind. Even though I know of so many good people who go out of their way to help others, I’m left to dwell on those who choose to steal from anyone they can, taking away what others have earned instead of earning it themselves.

But beyond the physical items, the greatest thing stolen was my own feeling of security. I’m left wondering if there is anywhere one can truly be safe anymore? I hate feeling like I can’t hold tight enough to everything that matters to me because there are people waiting in the shadows to rip it all away the first moment I loosen my grip.

Call me a Pollyanna if you must, but why can’t everyone just be good to each other?

(And now I must go double check all of the locks on the doors before going to bed.)