Understanding

Years ago, my husband and I went with some friends to see a stage show in a neighboring city. One friend was considering directing the show, and wanted to look at a production before making the final choice.

The show is called "Six Women With Brain Death," and it's very funny. In one scene, a character is onstage alone, cataloging her life's woes - failed marriages, sullen, uncooperative kids; just normal, everyday stresses, undoubtedly aggravated by her own responses. Addressing the audience directly, she laments, "Oh, I know that you could understand what I'm going through - but you probably don't."

I do not have a delicate giggle of a laugh - I have a belly laugh. I guffaw. At that point I simply howled with laughter. It was loud and unrestrained. It was also the only laugh in the theater. No one else so much as sniffed or smirked. I, on the other hand, was tickled to my core. There are few statements that I find to contain more truth than that one - and the truth is funny. So, in this crowded theater, I alone laughed without reservation, and the sound echoed through the quiet auditorium.

The actress onstage did something that actors are trained to not do; she turned, looked right at me, and broke "the fourth wall" (the imaginary, transparent "wall" separating the stage from the audience). Pointing straight at me, she said, "Except for you, ma'am." Then she went right back to the script.

To this day, I cannot imagine why no one else thought the line was as funny as I did. The human condition demonstrates, over and over, that while it is theoretically possible to understand others, in practice it's more miss than hit.

I never can wrap my head around people explaining how intolerable a situation was, and why they had to flee from it, by saying, "I just felt so alone." To me, that's just as much a given as saying, "I was breathing." I'm not entirely sure that it's possible to not feel alone. We're each alone inside of our heads. It just seems like biology to me.

What I think they might mean is "alienated." I totally do know how that feels - the feeling that you don't fit, you never will. On the other hand, that just seems expected, too. I have never met a human who said, "I always felt so connected and understood." Does anyone feel like that? Ever? If they do, it certainly isn't in school, or as the new hire on a job, or as a newlywed, a new parent, a new arrival to a new town/country, or, really, most other circumstances in life. It isn't as the artistic kid in a family full of ranchers, or the kid who hated school in a family full of PhDs, medical degrees and law degrees. It wasn't when you carefully chose an outfit, and everyone at the function looked horrified by it. It wasn't when you tried to explain your feelings to your parents, or to your children. It wasn't when you stood in a meeting or social activity or family gathering counting the minutes until you could leave. These experiences are universal. I am really not sure that their lack is.

Sometimes, someone will explain their divorce by saying, "I felt so alone, even when my spouse was there." Again, while I understand that they're sincerely in pain, it doesn't compute. While I adore my husband, he does not instinctively understand me (or anyone else), or I, him (or anyone else). He likes surprises; I like predictability. When I'm cold, he's hot. He likes loud; I like quiet. He's chatty; I'm not. We spend a lot of time wondering what in the world is up with the other person.

Often enough for it to be an expected occurance, not a deviation from the norm, in my memories of growing up, I'll forget that other people experienced something with me. I'll tell a story about my second grade teacher, and someone will say, "Oh, yeah - and remember the time that she..." Well, sure, I remember the time, but I'd forgotten that my friend was there. I've done this with my sister, too.  I'll be talking about a family vacation, and she'll chime in, and for a few seconds I'll think, "Was she there?" Of course she was, we're siblings, it was a family vacation, but when I look in my mind, I see me there, by myself. This will happen with my husband, too. I'll forget that he experienced something with me, until he starts talking about it.

Now, before you decide that I'm terribly lonely and depressed and need a party or something, alone does not equal sad and lonely. I like being alone. My mother, my brother, my son - we're pretty solitary beings. We enjoy solitude. Solitude is less lonely than being surrounded by people. So when I say "alone," it's likely to mean "tranquil, relaxing, calming." As I said, "alienated" is something else entirely. Being alone is not a cry for help, at least not to me.

My husband is also sure that his highest good as a husband is to read between the lines and ferret out what I "really mean." I think the highest good of a spouse is to listen to spoken words, exact words, and believe them. (I mean, why would anyone not want to be believed?) This means that we are constanly irritated. He'll try to figure out what I'm not saying, and act accordingly, and my reaction will be, "Did you not listen to me?"

The reverse is also true. He'll say something like, "I wonder if the Christmas lights still work," then be annoyed that I did not hear, "Tomorrow after I'm off work, I want to shop for lights."

"I told you that we needed to buy lights! You knew I wanted to do that this afternoon!"

"No, you wondered out loud if the old lights still work! That's not planning a shopping trip, much less planning an exact time for shopping!" He is just sure that "it was implied."  Why else would he bring it up?

Maddening.

A significant number of people who've known me for years are sure that they will know what I'm thinking, or doing, and why, but they're really bad at it.

I was once invited to an event that started with a tour of a local brewery, then ended with dinner. I showed up in time for dinner, and one friend said, "Oh, come on. You mean to tell me that your religion forbids you to even be in the same room as brewing beer?"

Wow; just so far off anything resembling accurate. I said, "No, it doesn't. I just have absolutely no interest in a brewery, so I'm not going to spend my time touring one." I cannot imagine that this was not obvious. My friend looked startled, and mumbled, "Oh. I guess."

(I think that, many times, when someone tells a story about how they knew this one person who was {fill in the blank}, and they saw their religious restrictions/weird behavior with their own eyes, it stems from an event like this where someone did not ask, but simply assumed.)

I'll tell a story, or write a Facebook post, and people who have known me for most of my life will say, "Oh, I know you! At that point, you (fill in the blank)" - and they will be so far off the mark, they're not even in the ballpark anymore.

I do the same thing. I'll assume that someone will be thinking or doing what I would do in their situation, and I will be so wrong. So very wrong.

This, folks, is why that line was so funny. Because you could understand what I'm going through, but you probably don't - and vice versa.

It's OK

I spoke to a friend recently about a family member of theirs who's going through a hard time. A mother and adult child had an argument - an ordinary kind of argument - but Mom passed away unexpectedly the next day, so this meant that the last thing that they ever said to each other was angry (and maybe unkind). This sent the child into a tailspin. Child is having a really hard time coping with the idea that they "never got to settle things;" they worry that the relationship is somehow frozen in that angry moment, and can't ever be fixed.

I can't speak for their mom, but I can speak for me. I think a great deal, the older I get, about Aging People Stuff. I probably make people uncomfortable, because I get pretty effusive about telling people that I love them (you've gotta say it!) I also tell my kids what to do if I'm senile, what I want at my funeral, stuff they might need to know.

Here's what my kids, my family, my friends might need to know if I die after we've argued: don't sweat it. Seriously. I won't. Our relationship is what took place over the whole time we knew each other, not on one day.

Plus, if you ever made the mistake of thinking that I never argue with people, give that up right now. I disagree with most people about something. I have very little filter. Pretty much daily, I tell someone that they're wrong, or they tell me that I'm wrong. Plus, I'm a stubborn person, from a long line of stubborn people. Heads get butted, feelings get hurt.

I don't really know what it would look like to always agree with people. I grew up practicing a religion that was different from the other members of my household. I don't belong to the same political party as my husband. There are more people in my life who differ from me than there are people who are similar.

That's undoubtedly why I don't get overwhelmed by differences. I just expect them. And sure, there are people whose company I don't enjoy. But I don't wish harm on any of them. I hope that they live happy, healthy lives. I just don't need to be in the same room with them while they do it. But, lemme tell you, that list is so small, the chance that you personally are on it is next to nothing. And, I can't think of a single person to whom I couldn't be civil - and times that I choose not to be, anyway.

There will be arguments, hurt feelings, the stuff of being human. And that, too, is expected.  So, I don't really need to "settle" things. I'm not waiting for an apology. (If you're waiting for one, know that I'm sorry that your feelings were hurt, sincerely. But you don't need to please me, and I don't need to please you.)

I don't plan on any "saying goodbye" scenes before I die, either. There will be no calling people to my side to impart last words of wisdom or love or anything else. If I think it really needs said, I've said it. I'm not waiting to hear you validate me.

So, look, whatever either of us may have said or done or not, we're good. It's OK.

If your mom or dad or best friend or boss or anyone else left unfinished business, I'm really sure that they want you to let it go. They knew what you wanted to say. It's alright. Don't lose any sleep over it. It doesn't define your life, or theirs.

It's OK.

Making Time

"Is your family close?" a classmate once asked me.

"Like, am I close to my siblings?"

"No, the rest of your family, like aunts and cousins."

"Oh, yeah, my family is really close!" I said with enthusiasm. "We get together every holiday, at my aunt's house." I looked forward to those family parties.

"Every holiday?"

"Yeah. You know - Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July - holidays." The girl who'd asked was looking really puzzled; I thought that the concept of "holiday" was pretty clear. "All my relatives on my dad's side are there. Not the ones who live really far away, but the ones who live an hour or two away all come, too."

"That's when you see your cousins?"

"Yeah, usually." There were a couple of cousins that I saw more often; we'd go to my cousin Lynne's cabin for a week in the summer, for instance. But if you asked, "When do you see your cousins?" the answer would be, "On holidays."

She gave me a look like she'd give to spoiled fruit. "If you only see your family on holidays, that means that you don't really like each other."

What? That made no sense to me. "No, it doesn't! We get along great!"

"I see my cousins at least three or four times a week," my classmate said. "Sometimes, every day."

What? I couldn't imagine that. Not because I didn't like my cousins, but because I couldn't quite imagine seeing anyone that often, unless they lived on the same block. Who drives to other people's houses several times a week?

Turns out, lots of people do. More power to them; I think that's great. I just come from more solitary people.

(Once my husband asked me, in aggravation, "When you get older, are you going to become a complete hermit?" My brother was visiting, and he answered for me: "It's inevitable; it's hereditary.")

I feel like I have a lot of friends, and a lot of close friends. I feel like my extended family is close. That doesn't mean that we see, or talk to, each other frequently. I always thought that "being close" was about how comfortable you felt with people, how much you liked them - not how often you were in contact. One of my long time friends said it well: "I don't have to see my friends every day to know who they are." You know that "pick up right where you left off" feeling? That's pretty much how I define "close."

I am often baffled by other definitions. "If you're important to someone, they'll make time for you," people say. Well, sure, but how frequent does that time need to be?

I once upset someone who was telling me how ignored by their sister they felt. Their examples were making little sense to me; it wasn't "She won't answer my phone calls," it was, "She doesn't call often enough." When I was, I guess, less sympathetic than she wanted me to be, she snapped, "How would you feel if you went weeks without hearing from your sister?"

"I do go weeks without hearing from my sister. I routinely go months without hearing from my sister. Sometimes, I hear from her twice a year - my birthday and Christmas."

She looked aghast. "Have you had a fight?"

"No! I adore my sister! She adores me!"

"Are you sure? It doesn't sound like it."

"Yes! I'm sure!"

Truly, the sister in question - I have two, one who lives near me and one who doesn't; I was speaking of the one who lives hundreds of miles away - is one of the nicest, most considerate people you will ever meet. I feel positively cherished by her. I don't think that I have to hear from her frequently in order for that to be true. She loves me, she'd be here in a heartbeat if I said, "I need you," she'd give me her internal organs if I needed them. And she calls every few months. This is OK! And if I needed to hear from her more often, I'd call her - it's not healthy to put my needs on her (or anyone else). I'm responsible for meeting my own needs.

I have four siblings, none of whom I see frequently, or call frequently, or go out to lunch with regularly. There are no festering resentments, no issues, no "grit your teeth and get through obligatory contact" on anyone's part. This makes sense to me. It makes sense to them.

It's the same with my friends. At least, it is on my part. Honestly, the last time I had a friend who felt that we had to get together, or at least talk on the phone, two or three times a week, I felt absolutely oppressed. I found it excessively clingy and needy. I also found it weird that she'd approached me in public just because our kids were roughly the same age. I mean, I liked her, but I was glad when a move meant that she needed a new, in the neighborhood, buddy. I can only be readily available for so long, and then I'll start hiding in the bathroom, and feigning illness.

I hear about women feeling alone and isolated, desperate for mom friends, and I know that they really are in pain, but trust me, I am not. We can't expect everyone to want what we want.

Two of my close friends are the kind of person I honestly thought was a myth before I met them. They are the kind of person who strikes up a conversation in line at the grocery store, in line at amusement parks, with the people at the table next to them in restaurants. They often walk away from meeting new people with names and phone numbers. Just the thought of it makes me exhausted enough to collapse into a puddle on the floor. If I thought that I had to not only make conversation but forge a lasting connection with someone who stood next to me waiting for Splash Mountain, I would just stop going places.

And, of course, they would be unhappy living my life.

I think that's the key - are you happy? If so, OK. If not, then you do what you need to do to fix it.

And if you think that someone's ignoring you, don't take it personally. They may be happy as a clam, thinking that you're best buddies.

Because, hey, if my cousins don't like me, well, I'm blissfully unaware, and what we have going is working for us. I like them, I think that they like me, and they don't have to hang out with me every week. Bam! Success.

Loving Tony

I recently lost a man I have loved since we were both children. He was 48 when he passed away - much too young for us to be prepared to lose him. Still, as they say, "It's not the years; it's the mileage," and he'd lived more than most people.

He wrote a published book in his 20s. In his 40s, he started working on an autobiography. It would tell details of his life, like how, at 25, he owned the second largest company of its kind in the world, printing backstage passes for the likes of the Rolling Stones, Madonna, and Billy Joel. He was making, we often said, more money than God.

Nothing in his life was of ordinary size and scope. Years later, he lost the company, and eventually, his family. He developed a drug problem that should have killed him. He consumed alcohol like it was water.

And, he lived to get clean and sober, religiously attending his meetings for AA, NA, and CA.

He asked me to write the foreward to his book. This is it.

*******************

Tony Perry is my brother. Most people gain siblings through some action taken by their parents, and are linked by biology, marriage, adoption, or in some other legal and definable way. This is not true for us; our parents might not immediately recognize each other if they passed on the street. There is no legal document defining our relationship. He is my brother because of decisions he and I have made, and because something in his soul speaks to something in mine. If you have people like this in your life – and I am fortunate to have many – you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you don't, there are no words that will adequately explain it to you.

I remember the first time I saw Tony. I was a 14 year old high school freshman. He was a 14 year old sophomore, wearing a jacket that said, "Italian Stallion" on the back. He wore that jacket everywhere. He was loud, abrasive, charismatic and funny. I was quiet and unsure. At the first audition of the year, he made a hash out of the cold reading, and obviously delighted in doing so. The teacher sighed and said, "Never ask a techie to read lines." My attention sharpened – I was one of the few kids from my junior high theater department to actually have tech experience. It soon became apparent that not only was Tony a techie, he was THE techie in our school.

I also remember the first time Tony met my mother. So does Tony – she impressed him immediately. The school boundaries for our school were odd and elongated, so that a large number of my schoolmates came from the neighboring city, and rode the bus for half an hour to get to and from school. Tony was one of those kids. One day he missed the bus, and asked if my mom could drive him home. My mom always had a car full of kids, no matter where we went. "It's pretty far, clear out in Hidden Valley," I told her, but she was willing to take him. Tony climbed into the back of the car with an armload of books, far too many to be just his homework. "Hi," he said, "I'm Tony. I steal textbooks." Mom didn't bat an eye.

"Hello, Tony," she said.

Down the street from our school, there was a convenience store. Tony seemed to live on apple juice sold in little round, apple shaped, single serving bottles. He leaned over the back of the seat and said, "I feel like an apple juice. Can we stop and get one?" Mom slowed down and pulled into the parking lot.

Tony was beside himself. "She's stopping! You're stopping! You're actually gonna stop?"

"Sure," she said. "You have money, right?"

Tony talked about that for years. "I couldn't believe she actually stopped so I could get an apple juice!"

We had little in common, really, but it didn't matter.

Tony was the sun around which the theater revolved. He designed our drama guild T-shirts and our black satin jackets. He was our official technical director and our unofficial social director. Tony created our own holidays, The Thirteen Radical Days of Christmas, and as a group we designed a different activity every day for the thirteen days leading up to Christmas break. One day, we went to a Monty Python film festival; one day we bought our lunch from the generics aisle of Albertson's. (Remember generics? Remember when they took up an entire aisle?) He planned our group vacations to Disneyland.

On our first Disneyland trip, we had 9 or 10 of us, of both sexes, crammed into a single hotel room. My mother slept in the armchair; Tony slept in the bed next to me.

He'd started out across the room, on the floor, but two of the girls kept flicking Skittles candy at him after lights out. "Hey!" he yelled loudly, into the dark, "she hit my wiener with a Skittle!"

"Tony. Don't use that word," my mother chastised.

"Fine. She hit me in the penis with a Skittle." A few minutes later, he declared loudly, "She did it again!"

"Find somewhere else to sleep, then," Mom told him.

"There is nowhere else!"

"You can find someplace."

He walked around the room, stopping at the side of the double bed I was in. "I," he declared dramatically, pointing down at the bed, "am sleeping here." Then he looked down at me. "That OK with you?"

"Fine with me."

He checked with my mom. "OK?"

"OK. Now settle down."

I was notoriously chaste. For years, Tony took great delight in announcing to people, sometimes upon first meeting them, "I was the first man ever to sleep with Sharon Smith."

When Tony was arrested during my junior year, it absolutely undid me. I had not lived a life of unrelenting sunshine and rainbows, but this was, absolutely and undeniably, the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

One of the things we had in common back then was sobriety, a relatively uncommon trait in our group. When Tony arrived back at the school after being processed and released at the juvenile facility, I saw him climb out of the car and I went to meet him. I had never seen that look on his face, never seen him walk with that heaviness. He looked at me and said quietly, "They strip searched me for drugs, Sharon." My heart broke.

We were in the middle of rehearsing for our spring play, the largest show of the year. When Tony was suspended and then expelled and forced to complete the year at another school, I was a mess. Barred from even attending the show, Tony arranged for a bouquet of blue balloons to be delivered to the cast onstage during curtain call closing night. I wrote a sappy poem about it that was published in our school literary magazine, and saved one of the blue ribbons and wove it into my hair the next year when I went to the prom.

Tony was the only person I danced with at my prom. He was there with his fiancee, Jeanette. I was there hoping to see my best friend be crowned Prom Queen. Someone else won, and Tony barked to our table, "Nobody clap!" I clapped anyway – it was only courteous. I stepped on his feet twice during the dance; I am dance impaired.

Tony quite literally handed me back my life once. I'd been acting since I was 12, loved tech almost as much, and intended to continue doing both forever. But, I spent three of my four high school years with a teacher assigned to the theater classes simply because she had low seniority and no one else wanted the job; she'd never even seen a play before being assigned to us. I left high school having learned anything new, for three quarters of my time there, from the other students or on my own. I felt woefully inadequate to pursue anything theater related, even for fun. Oh, well, I thought, those are the breaks. Things happen. I'll get over it. Then Tony phoned one day shortly after my graduation.

The local university was having open auditions for "Chicago." Their auditions were always open to the public, so it didn't matter that neither of us were students - Tony wanted me to go try for a tech job with him. I dragged my feet.

"You don't sound excited about this!" he barked at me.

"I don't think I'm qualified to do anything."

"I'm not qualified either! Let's just go." Tony'd owned his own stage lighting company since he was 13; if he wasn't qualified, who was? I went with him. I spent the next ten years exclusively with the university theater department, then found I was also at home in other theater companies. As I write this, I'm preparing for the final dress rehearsal of a show, one I'm in with my husband and two of my kids. There are no words adequate to thank someone for handing you your identity back.

Most of the time, girls Tony was dating, and girls who wanted to date him, didn't worry about me at all, since I was obviously not a romantic rival. Sometimes, though, someone resented me. After Tony and Jeanette broke up, a girl working on a show with Tony and me took the opportunity to ask him out. He was taking the breakup pretty hard, and told her, "I just can hardly stand to even look at anyone female right now. I don't even want to be in the same room with any females." She was disappointed; in a few minutes, she became angry – at me.

Tony asked me, in the course of conversation, if I wanted to go to a movie the next night. Incensed, the girl said, "I thought you couldn't even look at anything female right now!" Tony looked at me, back at the girl, and expressed his puzzlement.

"That's not a female! That's Sharon."

The poor girl was fairly lukewarm to me after that, even years later.

When I got married, Tony stood beside my husband. When my first child was born, he brought a tiny T-shirt to the hospital that was a replica of our high school drama guild shirts. My children have called him "Uncle Tony" all of their lives. When he got married on New Year's Eve, I bought a black and gold formal to wear. When he broke his back, I drove him on errands and prayed for his recovery.

For years, he had the Midas touch. Nothing he tried failed, or turned out badly, or lost money. Since he never does anything in a small way, when it all went to hell it was really, truly hell.

Tony probably doesn't remember this, but when things got really ugly, with the cocaine, the booze and the craziness, I told him that he could only screw up badly in front of my kids once, and then he wouldn't see them again until they were 25. I meant it, too. He may not remember it, but somewhere he internalized it. He may have been absent from our lives for months at a time, but he never made me question whether he could be around my kids. He came close only once. The few horror stories they've heard, they've heard now that he's sober. They never had to watch him spiral out of control. That's a gift, too, to me and to them.

"Can you imagine me on cocaine?" he asked at one of our theater reunions. (Yes, we organize our own high school reunions, just for those of us from the theater department.) We all said the same things. "I don't have to – I saw it!" "It was ugly." "You're so lucky you never really saw it, Tony." "God help me, it was awful."

When Tony decided to get sober, he was a mess. His hands shook. His memory was dreadful. More than once, we'd be somewhere in public and someone would approach, saying, "Hey, man, it's been a long time. How are you?" Tony would have an entire conversation, then ask me after they'd gone, "Who was that, and how do I know them?"

His life sounds more like melodramatic fiction than a real life. It's not, I promise you. You will find yourself disbelieving what he has to say, but it all happened.

Tony is exasperating, clueless, infuriating, loving, amazing, talented beyond belief and his own worst enemy. I love him with all my heart.

Love him or hate him, you'll never forget him.

******************

I'm not sure what it will be like to be here on Earth without him.

I wish him peace in the next life.

I am so glad that those of us who knew him have each other to lean on right now.

I miss you, my brother. I always will.

Photos With Friends

When we shoot high school senior portraits, we tell the clients, "Bring your sports equipment, musical instruments, and anything else you want." Sometimes, they bring friends. Often, they want them in the photos, like this.

Sometimes, the friends are along just for company or support or advice, or because the primary client wants them there. Hey, the client's paying for my time - I'll shoot whomever they want me to. These lovely people were all tagalongs on a friend's shoot.

Sometimes, it's more fun for everybody to shoot in a group setting. Sometimes, splitting the cost is a factor. Always, I enjoy my job.

I Know How You Feel

My friend Linda once told me a story about learning to recognize the feeling of air on her skin again.

Linda was a teen when she got married. Her husband was older than she was - old enough that today, eyebrows would raise and judgments would be made. They were blissfully happy for approximately half a century; then he got sick. She rarely left his side during his final illness, and had no idea what to do after his death.

I met her after his death. She was 67, working and happy, but still feeling incomplete. She had, according to her own assessment, only been functional again for a year or so.

She was living with her daughter, and working in the garden. One summer day, she felt something that stopped her in her tracks. She stood in the vegetable bed, confused, unsure of whether she'd heard something, been touched, smelled smoke - all she knew was that it had reached out and grabbed her attention. Then it happened again. "It was the wind," she said, "the wind on my back, between my shoulder blades. I was wearing a tank top, and I'd been sweating, and I was feeling the wind across my skin. I realized that I had literally not felt anything for years."

I understood.

A couple of years earlier, I too had not been feeling much of anything. Well, that's not entirely accurate. Mentally, I felt both numb and like an exposed, raw nerve, all the time. Ordinary feelings and experiences were muted, like trying to pick up tiny beads while wearing thick gloves. It felt like they might be there, but I was never really sure. On the other hand, every experience felt like sandpaper over sunburned skin. Sometimes, something would cut through like a knife, with sharp, stabbing pain. Most of the chatter inside my head was single note screaming.

When I was pregnant with my youngest child, I had something truly terrible happen to me. It was one of those things that will forever divide your life into Before the Incident and After the Incident. I tend to be dismissive of people who see everyday irritation, inconvenience or disappointment as trauma, so I don't exaggerate ordinary hurts. I had already experienced Stuff That Will Turn Your Hair White in my life, but this threw me. It not only threw me, it trampled me underfoot.

I rarely reference The Event. Most people, even my friends and family, don't know that it happened. I have spoken about it with my husband, my clergyman, and the professional counselor that my husband (gently) insisted that I see. I will, very occasionally, reference the effect that it had, but the event itself is not open to discussion. Ever. This decision is not open to debate. Ever. I reference it here only to keep things in logical order; the effect had a cause.

Everybody has core needs - to be loved, to be understood, to be useful, for example. I need to feel safe. Almost everything in my life is geared toward making sure that I, and my loved ones, are safe. Naturally, anything that feels unsafe pushes my buttons. Experiencing something that made me feel profoundly unsafe in every way was a seismic event. Life crashed down around my ears, and the shock waves rumbled far into the distance. It was impossible for me to feel safe anywhere, while doing anything.

I had always believed that most people are inherently good, and that most people will do the right thing most of the time. I know, I know, it sounds staggeringly naive, but it was one of my bedrock beliefs. Losing that belief made me question everything I knew, or thought I knew. Unable to sort out whether people in general could be trusted, and how to make that determination, I chose the Fox Mulder route - trust no one.

It was beyond painful. Going out in public was awful. I'd look around at any group of people and think, if a disaster hit right now - fire, shooting, anything - all these people would happily trample or sacrifice me and my family to save themselves. I've always found large groups to be alienating, and this just made it worse.

Staying home felt safer than leaving it, but I found that I could no longer read, watch TV or listen to music. ("Well, that makes sense," my husband said. "Music is designed to evoke an emotional response, and you're fighting emotion right now.") Any outside input at all, no matter the source, was likely to rip open mental wounds that I was trying desperately to stitch closed. Even fluffy sitcoms would have references, or visuals, that brought up excruciatingly painful memories - or predictions, or philosophies, or a hundred other things.

Leaving home was like mountain climbing - I had to prepare, and it took great stamina to complete. More than once, grocery shopping reduced me to tears, and I had to flee the store. The first two times I tried to watch a movie were abject failures. Midway through, I dissolved into a puddle of pain and tears.

I stepped down as leader of my daughters' Girl Scout troops, and I stopped volunteering for community theater groups. I stopped taking photos; on holidays and birthdays I'd shove the camera into my husband's hands and say something like, "Make sure to get one with the cake in it." I continued attending church for two reasons: I couldn't tell my kids it was important if I didn't go, and if I entirely dropped out, church members would try to find out why, and I wasn't about to discuss it. Luckily, the pregnancy, and later, having a newborn, made excuses easy. "I'm just so tired" - which was true. "I'm spread a little too thin" - which was an understatement. "I need to be home with my family" - totally understandable. With four kids, it was easy to say to everyone, "Nope, sorry, I have no time to spare." It made sense. I've never been good about phone calls, but for a solid year I don't think I made a single one. Since it wasn't too out of character, it slid under people's radar, and that's how I wanted it.

Everyone needs something different when they're experiencing stress. Many people need reassurance, or consoling, or distracting. What I want most when I experience any kind of distress is for things to feel normal again, so what I want most from others is that they behave as if everything is normal. Giving me a hug, or saying, "I'm here for you" generally makes things worse. I am OK with an oblique reference as long as it's followed by completely normal behavior. Asking, "Are you OK?" is fine, as long as you will then accept my assurance that I am, or will be, and immediate move on.

As an example of what works best: I've spent most of my adult life being a stay at home mom and working for myself, taking photographs. Once, though, I worked for a small, local company part time. (It was actually part of my plan to force myself out of my home and into interaction with other humans. I met some pretty cool ones there.) One day, I got called into the boss's office, and left about 30 minutes later in tears. Not sniffling, but bawling.

My co-workers didn't know how to react. They had no idea what had happened. For all they knew, I'd just been caught stealing from the company, and the police were on their way. (Actually, it was a personal issue, and the boss reacted very well to what I had to say.) They were unsure of what to say or do, so they ignored me, which is exactly what I needed.

About an hour later, with my tissue box nearing empty and me feeling almost OK again, three or four co-workers were standing nearby discussing something. I've forgotten what. One of them may have said something about the break room being out of snacks, because what I felt compelled to say, in my best British accent, was, "And they ate Robin's minstrels. And there was much rejoicing."

Their heads all swiveled toward me, and they gave me the deer-in-the-headlights stare. One then managed to squeak, "What?" It was clear that they still didn't know what to say, or if they should speak to me at all. Plus, I hadn't so much as looked up for an hour.

I said, louder and very distinctly, "And they ate Robin's minstrels. And there was much rejoicing." They still looked slightly blank, so I said, "Oh, come on. Are none of you Monty Python fans?"

The ice broke. "Oh! Holy Grail! I love that movie!" More quotes were shared, people laughed, some of those in the neighboring desks joined in. Things were back to normal. I was happy, they were happy, and there was no need to ask if I was OK. Perfect.

My husband is more of a conventional human. When he is stressed, he wants to be surrounded by people who tell him that he's wonderful and loved, and that other people are jerks. He wants to have places to go, and things to do, that keep him from thinking too much. It makes no sense to him that I need the universe to collapse down to a space barely bigger than the inside of my head. He constantly tried to cheer me up by doing things that would cheer him up if he was down. Makes sense, right? I mean, the Golden Rule and all.

"Why don't you call So-and-so?" he'd say. "Go out to lunch." I tried to explain - the mere thought had me in tears of exhaustion. I had just enough energy to function, and none to spare. He also could not understand my insistence on avoiding mention of The Event. "Can't you just say that you're upset, and not say why?" he'd ask. NO. First, that's not how interaction works. Second, if I didn't want to discuss it, it was beyond rude to bring it up. Also, I cannot stand it when people say, "I don't want to talk about it" when what they mean is, "Please show me that you're interested. I'd love to tell you, but only if I'm sure of how you'll respond." It's manipulative twaddle. I would probably become violent if someone tried to cajole it out of me.

"Don't you think you'd feel better if you talked to your friends?" he wanted to know.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because they'll tell me that they love me, and I'm wonderful, and it's not my fault, and it's not the end of the world, and millions of people have lived through it before, and I will too, and things will get better eventually, and I already know all of that. Why would I take the time and energy to go over something that I already know?" It just seemed like a huge waste of time and energy, and I had no energy to spare.

Even when I did talk to someone, I often seemed to baffle them. My counselor said during one visit, with genuine concern, "Do you ever think, 'Why me?'"

My response was immediate. "Never. I mean, people have had horrible things happen to them - people have been sent to concentration camps. Why would I think that I, personally, am immune to the human condition?" He stared at me for a moment, then scribbled madly in his notebook. Apparently that was not the expected response.

I don't understand people who think that nothing bad will ever happen to them. I mean, has that ever been the experience of a single person who's ever lived? Then why do you think it will be your experience?

(I also never understood people who'd say things like, "When my mother/father died, it just shook my faith to the core." I understand a tiny bit if your parent was murdered, or if they had a lingering illness, and you're not sure why people have to endure that, but the simple fact of their death? Shouldn't that be a given? If every person who ever lived has also died, chances are that everyone you know will die one day. How can that take you by surprise?

I lost my dad at 22, so I'd experienced losing a parent before most of my peers. "Wait until your mom dies," they'd say. My mom died only a few months ago, and I miss her more than I can say, but I knew that she'd leave one day. It was expected. My faith was unaffected.)

Gloom and doom people, the "everything bad always happens to me" people, also puzzle and annoy me. Usually, they're still walking, talking, sighted - the people with real hardships tend to be far more cheerful. There is no possible way that "everything bad always happens" to you, so don't even try to convince me that it does. Stuff happens, yeah - to you and to everybody else. It's always something. Great stuff happens to you, too, so pay attention to that. If you woke up today, be thankful.

Some days you're the bug, and some days you're the windshield. That's normal.

One friend of mine was around me enough during this time to notice that something was wrong, but she also knew me well enough to know that if I wanted to talk about it, I would, so she didn't ask any questions or try too hard to be helpful. I appreciated it. One day I said to her, "You know, if I was ever to start trusting people again, I think I'd start with your husband." He's a great guy, who also never tried too hard, but I knew he'd jump if I did ask for help.

She smiled. "Yeah. He's pretty great." It was a compliment, to both of them, and she accepted it. It was nice.

I remember the exact moment, and place, I had my Linda-and-the-wind experience.

There's a local park where we spend a lot of time. We photograph it, and people in it, in the spring when everything's blooming, and in the fall when the foliage changes color. We spend a lot of family nights there, walking the trails, having popsicles and looking for baby bunnies.

We were there on another family night, and my kids were playing nearby, watching another family fly kites. I looked over at a particular spot, and noticed immediately how I'd frame a photo. I wished I'd brought the camera. The thought stopped me cold - taking photos has been second nature since I was eight years old, but I hadn't actually thought about taking one for over two years.

I became excited, because I wanted to take a photo. Then I became even more excited, because, holy cow, I was excited! That was new and different and unexpected!

We came back a few days later with the camera. The photos aren't amazing because of their content, which is nice but ordinary, but they are deeply amazing because I took them, on my own, just because I wanted to. Such a little thing, and so monumental.

When Linda told me her story about the wind, I nodded enthusiastically. "I know how that feels!" I told her - and I did.

Sometimes that may be why things happen to you - so that some day, you can look another person in the eye and say, "I know how you feel" - and you will know.

Such a little thing, and so monumental.

A Little Help From My Friends

The mother of one of my son's friends came over recently to tell me that she was afraid that some of the kids my son's been friends with for years were doing drugs. "I'm so sorry to drop this in your lap," she said. She gave me reasons for this fear, and named some names. She also expressed that, in her opinion, it would be a mistake to let my son spend time around these kids any more. "I'm just afraid that they'll drag him down. He's avoided all this mess."

It's a legitimate concern. Kids do drugs. They drink. They have unprotected sex with people they barely know, or like, well enough to speak to. Awful things happen. I don't mean to minimize the dangers or possibilities. Also, my son is a bright, ambitious, sober 18 year old, about to head off to a university hundreds of miles away. Now is not the time to derail.

Still, I am not really worried. I have not laid down any ultimatums.

Please, do not feel the need to "enlighten" me with horror stories. Please do not tell me that every parent thinks, "It won't happen to my kid." I know these things. I do. I don't feel that my child, or his friends, are angelic or perfect. I also do not feel that substance abuse is a rite of passage, and nothing to be alarmed about (or worse, necessary).

To understand how I feel, you have to understand me. To understand me, we have to go back, more than 30 years. We have to go back to high school.

In junior high (for me, 6th - 8th grade, fall 1977 - spring 1980) I knew a few kids who drank, and a few who did drugs. Most of my close friends were pretty sober, but I did know people who engaged in various risky or improper behaviors.

I once mentioned to my husband, in passing, that I'd learned to carry my purse from a successful purse snatcher and pickpocket.  "WHAT?" he responded. He found this fact bizarre and astonishing, and in need of an explanation.

I explained that my friend W had made a pretty tidy sum stealing purses and wallets. He'd shown me how to carry my stuff to minimize the chances that someone would take mine. He was a pretty good teacher. The only time someone's ever taken my bag, I walked out of a restaurant and left it there.

I started high school in the fall of 1980, and graduated in the spring of 1984.

Drugs were not hard to find. Alcohol was even easier. I mean, it was high school.

I spent most of my time in the theater department. I was also on the debate team, the yearbook staff and the newspaper staff. My friends ranged from total outcasts to the pretty and popular. I see no reason to dislike people unless they make it abundantly clear that they dislike me. Even then, I usually wish them well - just from a distance.

I have never had a thing for bad boys. I also did not swoon over jocks. My friends would obsess over how cute #42's butt was, or how mysterious the brooding James Dean wannabe in leather was, and it would just bore me. I tended to get crushes on the quirky, nerdy guys. Guys who can carry on an intelligent and funny conversation did it for me (and still do). As a freshman, I had no interest in the blue eyed, blond football player named Nick who sat next to me in science, but I was fascinated by the guy named John who sat in front of me and was in ROTC (the HEIGHT of uncool at my high school). He had painted his car to look like a tank, complete with turret on the roof. He was also witty.

Honestly, though, both my male and female friends saw me as some kind of third gender. I didn't date in high school.

I did hang around with a very large, very tightly knit group of kids. It felt like a family then, and it still feels like a family now.

A significant percentage of these kids did drugs and/or drank to excess. Not all, but enough to be over the 51% required to call it the majority. Some kids also dealt drugs, including one of my best friends. (He thought that no one would notice that he was buying himself sports cars with cash, while working at McDonald's.) Some went way beyond "sexually active" and into "promiscuous." One had his own still. (His "brew" was locally famous, and reputed to be high proof.)

This behavior was never what attracted me to any of them. I tended to view it with a middle aged attitude, hovering between fear and exasperation. I kept waiting for all of them to grow out of it.

On the other hand, they kept expecting me to grow up and get with the program and act like everybody else. They were fine with me as I was, though. They had no investment in making me change.

Even when I started driving a van, and took on the role of designated driver (before there was even a term for it), and was therefore fairly often at parties with very intoxicated people, I felt no pressure to drink or do drugs. None. Zero. I not only have never been intoxicated, I have never tasted a beer, or a joint, or many other substances. I take no credit and expect no admiration, because it took no effort at all. I'm not the only one who made it through school - or life - this way, either. I can introduce you to a number of us. It's not superhuman. It's fairly ordinary.

Almost no one offered alcohol or drugs to me, and those who did were satisfied with a simple, "No thanks." Let me tell you, nothing promotes sobriety more than being the only sober one in a room.  Intoxicated people have no idea how ridiculous they look and sound.

Others occasionally refused for me, with much more vehemence than I would have used. Once, someone offered me hallucinogenic mushrooms, and I said the customary, "No, thanks." Their response was a simple, "OK," and I thought that would be the end of it. Another friend leapt in.

"Don't EVER offer her anything like that again! EVER!"

The first friend was shocked. They thought they were being courteous, offering to share. They started to justify - "They're all natural. They're organic. The Native Americans have used them in their religious rituals for centuries..."

"I don't care! NEVER offer Sharon something like that!"

"It's OK," I said.

"No! It's not! It's against your religion!"

"I can say 'no' on my own."

"You shouldn't have to!"

They were protective, especially when they, themselves, were sober.

Still, it wasn't always pretty. I have been vomited on. I have cleaned up someone else's car - a Cadillac - in the middle of the night before the owner's children could return it home. I have sat next to a bed, making sure the sleeper's head hung slightly over the side. One of my dad's stories from his career at the fire department was about a coworker who fell asleep intoxicated and drowned in his own vomit; I was terrified that I would lose someone that I loved. Long before I became a parent, I had no qualms about dealing with the bodily fluids and functions of others.

Long after high school, I worried that someone would overdose, or die in a DUI crash, or be arrested for trafficking.

I never questioned whether they loved me. I felt very loved. I can't imagine that they ever questioned whether or not I loved them. My kids grew up calling many of these people "Aunt" and "Uncle." Most others, they know on a first name basis. I do not understand people who must be surrounded by others who agree with them, and behave in similar ways. Even at the age at which people tend to be the most judgmental and exclusionary, adolescence, we all held it together, loving people who were very, very different from ourselves.

At the time, many people (mostly adults) assured me that it was temporary. We'd never even see each other after high school, except for maybe at school reunions, they said. See the preceding paragraph; some of us are now grandparents, and we still love each other. We are still a part of each other's lives. My kids have "cousins" who are totally unrelated to them. We - the theater department of our high school - hold our own reunions, encompassing about 8 graduation years, because attending school reunions means that we're limited to seeing those from a single graduation year.

My mother always knew who was doing what (and with whom). She knew who took 1/2 an inch at a time from all the liquor bottles in the cabinet, combined and drank it in a concoction called "death." She knew who owned the still. She knew how my friend bought his sports cars. She knew who raided their parents' stash, and whose parents let them (and others) drink at home. I told her, the other kids told her - nobody hid things from my mom. She loved them anyway. This is not because my mother was enabling and trying to be cool. She would have preferred it if they were all sober and virginal. There were clear, iron clad rules. There would be none of this at her house or on her property, whether she was home or not. (No one ever violated this rule.) She would prefer it if it didn't happen in front of her kid, but she left that up to me. She would not give anyone money or bail anyone out. If you screwed up, it was on you. If you followed her rules, you were always welcome in her home. And I mean always - two kids once showed up at 11:30 at night to ask for a fudgesicle. She let them sleep at our house, and had no trouble letting me spend time at their houses.

And they all loved her. Until the end of her life, many of them called her Mom.

One of my siblings once argued with my mom that she was showing favoritism. "You hate my friends! You love Sharon's friends, and they do way worse stuff than mine do!" (This is debatable, but Mom didn't bother.) Her response was immediate and succinct.

"That's because Sharon has never felt compelled to act like her friends."

I thought about that statement when the mother came to me with her concerns about my son's friends.

I know that my son is not me, and that his friends are not my friends. I also know what kind of people they are.

My son is very secure in his beliefs and behaviors. He is bright, personable, friendly and not easily swayed. He doesn't drink, he doesn't use drugs, and I don't see him starting, even if someone makes it available. He is secure being the only "different" one, he is OK with being teased. He can walk away when he needs to. He does not cave in to pressure in order to fit in. If he was a different type of personality, things might be different.

The friends in question are great kids. I'm not going to swear that they've never done something stupid, because they're human, they're kids, and their brains aren't done forming yet. Plus, not everyone believes in lifelong teetotaling. Still, I cannot conceive of them as being so far gone that they're a danger to my kid.

I thought about my mother's reaction to my friends. I thought about how my life would be immeasurably emptier without them in it. I thought about the people my son has added to our family - because they are family. They are not disposable.

Three of my kids are adults, and one is a teen, so we can have conversations that may have been iffy when they were younger.

"Can you imagine," I asked, "how all of our lives would be different if Grandma had insisted that I couldn't be around Aunt B any more?" Their Aunt B spent years intoxicated on a daily basis, in a household where adults could be absent for weeks at a time. My kids know this, and they know how much their grandma loved Aunt B. "Can you even imagine Aunt B being a bad influence?" Their shocked looks said that they could not.

I had a conversation with the kids in question, and their moms. They knew what had been said. I did not ask what they may or may not have done. I did not threaten, or lecture. I said, "Do we have to have a conversation about what I consider to be acceptable behavior?"

They laughed. "No, Mom." They know.

I said to my son, "Even if other people lose their minds, I expect you not to lose yours."

"I know, Mom."

I asked the other parents, "Are you worried?"

"Not at all."

"OK, then. We're all clear."

In 30 years, maybe they'll have similar conversations with their kids, and be able to think of how their honorary aunts and uncles did not ruin their parents' lives. I hope so.

Robbed, Repeatedly

                   I wrote this almost three years ago, and posted it on my Facebook page.  Every now and then, someone will ask, "Whatever happened with...?" If you already know this story, skip to the end to find out how it all turned out.

**************************************

                   It started with my son's bike.

                   A little over a year and a half ago, my son's Scout troop started working on their bicycling badge. Boys have to earn a badge in hiking, swimming or cycling to earn their Eagle Scout award, so the troop planned for the boys to earn their cycling badges together. The badge includes doing several long distance rides, culminating in a 50 mile ride. There was no way his old bike, designed for tooling around the neighborhood, would handle extended rides on gravel roads, the way his troop had planned, so we went shopping for a mountain bike.

                   It was time for a new bike anyway – he was now a teen, still using the bike we'd bought for a younger child. We spent days going from store to store, specialty bike shops to WalMart. We finally chose a 24 inch mountain bike; at 13, Alex wasn't done growing. It wasn't top of the line, but it was far from the bottom. It handled the bike trail along the river, the dirt roads in the mountains, and the pavement in town, just like it needed to.

                   About a month ago, I was doing yard work when Alex said, "Mom, where did you put my bike?" All of our bikes were kept in the back yard – the garage is too crowded and the shed is too small. I uttered the same things countless parents before me have: "I didn't put it anywhere; I don't ride it."

                  Undeterred, Alex said, "Well, you must have put it somewhere. It's not where it's supposed to be."

                   Feeling slightly harassed, and wanting to finish my yard work, I said, "It's got to be wherever you put it. Nobody else uses it." It's possible that, when I'm preoccupied or stressed, I become a walking cliché' factory.

                   Alex was feeling slightly harassed, himself. "Didn't you move it yesterday when you were digging up those plants?" His bike, along with his sister's brand new bike, had been in our floorless gazebo, to keep them out of the recent rain. The day before, I'd been moving things out of the gazebo so I could dig up, and give away via Freecycle, the seedling grapevines that had sprouted in its center. I tried to remember – had his bike been there?

                    I looked over at the gazebo, as if it could tell me, and noticed Hallie's bike in the same place I expected it. I also saw something that gave me the first inkling that something might be wrong. Alex's helmet, which always hangs from his handlebars, was lying on the ground where I expected his bike to be. He wouldn't have used the bike and left the helmet there.

                    We searched the yard; no bike. We phoned his friends, his grandmother, his youth group leader; no bike. We called the man who'd given him a ride home from the church father/son campout. They'd ridden bikes home, about 40 miles down the mountain, from the overnight trip, so I knew he'd had the bike then. No bike. He hadn't left his bike anywhere he'd been recently. It soon became clear to us that the bike had been stolen.

                    We were furious. Who wouldn't be? The idea that someone had come into my back yard and stolen from my child was infuriating.

                    Most of our friends said, "It's going to Burning Man. It's already been stripped and painted fuchsia in someone's garage." The attendees of the annual festival would start streaming through town within weeks, and I learned that bikes are a prized Burning Man commodity (and also that many are abandoned afterward.) I supposed that was marginally better than having a crackhead pawn it for $20 to get their next fix.

                    I wondered if it was a boy who wanted a bike. If someone had asked, we might have given them the bike. It was still in great shape, but Alex had grown more than half a foot since we bought it, and was probably due for a new one again. A girlfriend's husband had just given away his old mountain bike. I see bikes frequently on Freecycle. Why don't people just ask, I wondered. If I knew a kid who really wanted a bike, or an adult who needed one to get to work, I'd do everything I could to get them one.

                    The most likely scenario, my husband decided, was that a ball had come over our back fence from the park, as they frequently do, and that the owner had jumped the fence to retrieve it. Whoever it was saw the bike, liked it, tossed it over the fence into the park and jumped over after it, disappearing in less than a minute. That sounded extremely plausible, but we resigned ourselves to the idea that we'd never know.

                   We bought a new bike, and keep it in the living room, next to Hallie's bike. Nothing in my back yard is secure enough to chain it to.

                   A week or so later, we left the state to go visit our oldest daughter at college. She's staying there for the summer, and missing her family. We haven't visited since we dropped her off three years ago, and never saw her last apartment. It was time to go see her, meet her roommates, and help her feel important.

                   Whenever we go out of town, my mother picks up the mail and waters the plants, Alex's best friend feeds the pets, and our second born daughter checks in now and then to use the computer, raid the fridge and make sure things are OK. We feel very secure having three separate people watching our house, and my mom is only 2 ½ blocks away in case of an emergency.

                   Terry, our daughter, spent several hours on Sunday at the house. Everything was fine. Jeff, our pet sitter, and his mom left at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday night. Everything was fine. We arrived home at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday night.

                    As tends to be the case when arriving home after a long drive, there was a race for the bathroom. I headed to the bathroom off the master bedroom, and Alex headed for the bathroom by the children's rooms. I went into the bathroom without turning on the light in my room. The bathroom door is only about two steps to the left of the bedroom entrance.

                     I sat down on the toilet, and immediately felt fear. It seemed so odd, so completely out of context that I actually reached up to my neck to feel my pulse, to see if I was somehow wrong in thinking that I was afraid. Sure enough, my pulse was pounding. I wondered what in the world was wrong; usually, coming home is an immense relief – we're safe, I get to sleep in my own bed – but this time the fear seemed to emanate from the room somehow. I listened hard, then looked around to see if I could see anything.

                    The first thing I noticed was the medicine cabinet, with all three doors standing wide open. Then, I noticed that the cabinet under the sink was wide open. There were a few other things out of place, but the gaping doors were like an alarm – something's wrong, something's wrong. There was no reason for Jeff or Terry to be in my bathroom, and my mother, at 80, avoids the stairs. Even if anyone had needed, say, an aspirin, the room wouldn't look this way.

                    I finished my business and just stared for a moment, then walked back into my room and turned on the light. Holy cow.

                   The room was ransacked, with great thoroughness and little finesse. The bedding had been swept off onto the floor, and the bed was covered with the contents of every box, bowl and catchall in the room. All the drawers had been dumped onto the floor, and linens and clothes from the closet were strewn across the room. I couldn't even walk to the bed; the steps to the bathroom were the only clear places on the floor. The shelves that hold my knickknacks – my ceramic carousel horses, travel keepsakes, wedding album – had also been emptied onto the floor.

                   I mentally ran through my walk through the house and up the stairs; everything had seemed fine, but I hadn't been looking too closely. I heard my son go into his room down the hall, and I hurried down the hall and poked my head in. "Everything OK here?" I asked, in what was almost a normal tone. Alex assumed I was asking about the other residents of his room, the tortoise, snake and bearded dragon, and said, "Yeah, everybody's OK," as he picked up Flame, the snake. Honestly, I was relieved to see Flame. Somehow, I thought that burglars would want a snake.

                  "OK, just checking!" I headed back down the stairs. The hallway and kitchen looked just like I'd left them a week earlier, except for the pile of mail. Back through the living room to the front door everything looked fine, but I headed away from the front door, through the living room toward the back of the house and the family room. There it was – an open window with a slit screen. A once-over revealed that one of our computer monitors was gone, but I didn't see much else amiss, except for the fact that a landscaping timber was sitting in the middle of my couch. I didn't even want to contemplate why that was.

                   My husband was still schlepping luggage in from the car, a rental. I said something vague like, "I'll need you as soon as this is done." He caught the edge in my voice that Alex hadn't. "Is everything OK?"

                   Well. I could have blown him off, but why? I said something like, "I'm not sure, but it'll wait." It would not wait. He was immediately alert.

                   Dan's first reaction was anger, of course. "Not much seems to be missing," I told him, but he looked specifically for items of value, and in seconds knew that the Wii and all the controllers and games were gone. "They got the DVD player!" he called from in front of the TV cabinet. At the same moment, I noticed the empty shelf in the living room, the shelf that should be covered in Alex's knife and sword collection. My heart sank.

                   He started collecting them about three years ago, and usually received additions to his collection on Christmas and birthdays. As a Scout, he'd carried pocket knives and Swiss Army knives from a young age, but he'd more recently been collecting larger, more ornate knives, designed for show.

                   The first showy knife was a Christmas gift. My kids get one gift from Santa every year, delivered by the Big Guy personally at our extended family party. We have a photo of the moment Alex opened the cherry stained box with the bears-in-a-stream scene on the lid and discovered the knife, a fairly large number with a handle having an intricate carving of bears that matched the art on the box. He's beaming ear to ear. He spent the rest of the party reverently opening the lid to show the adults who said, "Let me see that." The fact that his adult cousins, including the two who are his shooting coaches, liked the knife gave it even more cachet. The next year, he received a large knife with a handle shaped like an eagle and a wooden stand to display it. He informed me, with a twinkle in his eye as he brandished the six inch blade, "I think Santa has lost his mind."

                      Last year, he received a set of three matched swords for Christmas. He's been fencing for years now, which has made him more curious and better informed about swords. He loves dragons, so the sheaths have emblazoned dragons on them.

                      As his collection grew, he decided to display them all in the living room. I wondered why he didn't want shelves in his room, or just outside in the hallway, and he quickly cleared that up – "I want everyone to be able to see them." Now they were gone, all of them. We found the two longest swords lying on the floor under the window. Apparently, the smallest was small enough to shove down the back of a thief's pants, but the others were too large and would have drawn undue attention, should someone race through the neighborhood or through the park waving them. Not many people wielding samurai swords in suburbia.

                     We had to return the rental car, but I didn't want my kids alone in the house. I called Terry to come over and stay with them; she burst into tears when I told her that the thieves had come in through the window. After returning the car, we went to the police station and were given paperwork to fill out and told to go home and wait for an officer. ("Why did you come here instead of phoning?" the desk clerk wanted to know. It's not as if I deal with crime daily; if there's protocol for non emergency police reports, I don't know it, and I didn't think this merited 911.) We were not to clean up, she said; they'd want photos.

                     As we scoured the house, the losses became clearer. The cash we'd set aside for a kitchen remodel was gone. The Game Cube games were gone. It's not as if we wouldn't be eating for a week, or the house was burned down or anyone harmed, but if you've ever been robbed, you know that isn't the whole picture. It's frightening, infuriating, disheartening. You don't know if you're safe, or if they'll be back, or why they chose you; you don't know the answer to a hundred different questions.

                      Dan was the one who noticed that my keys were gone. Normally, they hang on a rack labeled, "keys." Since we were driving a rental and my husband and son both had house keys, I'd left my cumbersome wad at home. Losing the keychains was bad enough. One was an eighteen year old keepsake, a memento of a play I'd worked on; one was a fifteen year old gift from my niece, brought back from London. Having the keys to my home and my cars in the hands of burglars was intolerable. We had a new deadbolt in the door within an hour. The police finally came after four hours.

                      The officer was nice, but seemed fairly bored. He also seemed fairly skeptical, as though we were making the whole thing up. He'd say things like, "So you think they came in this way?" The only two answers that come to mind are, "Looks like it," and, "No, chances are they came in some other way and opened this window and slit the screen as a decorating statement." Maybe I'm just touchy, but after 11 hours in the car, a robbery and waiting in a mess until one thirty in the morning, touchy is understandable.

                     People are sometimes puzzled by my reaction to a crisis, as well. I become extremely calm, extremely efficient and very articulate. It throws people who expect sniveling hysteria. I might be too sensitive, but it seemed that the officer wondered why I wasn't crying or swearing.

                     "Do you have any idea who it might have been?" he wanted to know.

                     "From what they took and what they left, I'm guessing teenage kids," I said.

                     "Oh, ma'am, never assume that," was the reply. He's probably right – what do I know about burglars? I thought.

                     He took meticulous notes, needing an approximate dollar value for everything we lost. He took photos, but no fingerprints. Then he calmly informed us, "You know, this case will go inactive almost immediately. It's unlikely you'll ever get any of this back."

                     "Yes, but if you find a robbery suspect, and they have some of our stuff, you can prosecute them for both, right?" The answer was vague, but seemed to translate to, "Don't hold your breath."

                     You know, I understand that law enforcement is understaffed, overwhelmed and strapped for cash. I get it that my low dollar property crime is not a #1 priority. I know that there are violent, dreadful happenings in my community. I know, too, that I will not always meet people when they're at their best. But come on, is sympathy too much to ask? A little outrage? "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Zenz"?

                      I left most of the mess for the next day. I was so exhausted that I didn't have much energy left. Cleaning up was almost worse than the mess.

                      In all the children's rooms, the dressers had been rifled and the mattresses rolled off the bed. Does anyone actually hide valuables under their bed? The only thing you'll find under mine is some stray tissues. In my sock drawer, oddly enough, I have socks. From the fury displayed in our room, the thieves were thinking, "Where are the valuables? Is this it?" Yes, that's it. My jewelry is costume. My drawers contain clothes.

                       Picking up the things they left on the floor, the things they'd discarded as being of no value, was painful. The outfits my kids wore home from the hospital as newborns, my son's Little League jersey, the handpainted T-shirt from camp, all were dropped on the floor and stepped on. These are my valuables. My blown glass rose under a dome, my memento from working on the play "Beauty and the Beast," broke when it hit the floor.

                      They were apparently disappointed that the pile of magazines in our room contained "PEOPLE" and "Family Handyman" but no porn. They seemed equally disappointed that my medicine cabinet contained only items like Benadryl and ibuprofen. We don't even have any cough syrup or liquid NyQuil.

                      I spent time wondering about who the intruders were. Were they kids, taking things that they personally wanted, or adults, ready to pawn it all to feed a drug habit? We were warned to expect them back in 4 to 6 weeks, about the time they'd figure that we'd replaced everything. I felt so sorry for my son; so much of what was gone was directly or indirectly his. To his credit, he made no "Why me?" comments, and the only semi-malicious wish he had was, "I'd like to see them try to rob a 7-11 with that sword. It's dull."

                     Countless people said to me, "It has to be someone who knew that you were gone." No, it doesn't; most property crimes are crimes of opportunity, and one of the tried and true methods of picking a house to rob is simply ringing the doorbell to see if anyone answers.

                      Many people went farther and said, "Who did you tell that you'd be gone? You didn't tell your neighbors, did you?" Why does this simple statement not enrage people? I remember when, "Tell your neighbors when you'll be gone, so they'll be alert to anything suspicious happening at your house" was a standard bit of law enforcement advice. It wasn't that long ago! How, in the space of a single generation, or less, have we gone from assuming that our neighbors will watch out for us to assuming that our neighbors will victimize us? How is this mindset OK? Why are we not all outraged by the implications?

                     I didn't say that, though. Over and over, I said, "No, we didn't tell our neighbors. They can probably tell anyway, but I'm sure this was no one that we know." To everyone from the police department to my mother, we said the same thing. "No, it wasn't anyone we know. Maybe a friend of a friend, but nobody we know."

                    Last Sunday, I went out to my car to drive myself and my kids to church. (Dan was at work.) There wasn't even a stutter when I turned my key, so I assumed a dead battery and hopped in the other car. That night I told my husband, "You'll need to jumpstart Stevie for me." (Yes, we named the car. All our cars have names.) "His battery was dead this morning."

                    When Dan went out to jumpstart the car, the battery was gone. Gone. Stolen, right out of my car. Checking the hoods of the other cars (Earl, Henry and Blue, if you must know,) he discovered that all the hoods had been popped. They'd been "shopping," and had taken the battery not at random, but because it was the size they needed.

                     I tried to imagine the scenario – your car dies, so you leave it and go looking under every car in walking distance? You don't need it for a car, but you're powering a terrorist device? How far do you want to carry a car battery, anyway?

                      So, we bought a new battery and tried to decide if we wanted to fill out another useless police report. I didn't want to hear, "You realize you won't be getting that back," again.

                      This week, my oldest daughter came to visit. It's the last time Lana will be home before she graduates from college, so we planned fun things. On her wish list was going to Tahoe, so we took the two days Terry had off and went camping at Tahoe. We returned about 4:00 in the afternoon, and as we made the turn onto our street, our next door neighbor, M, came out of his house beckoning. We saw him just a few seconds before one of the kids said, "Dad, where's your car?"

                      In front of our house was a blank space in between Terry's car and mine. Blue, Dan's car, was gone.

                     While Lana has been fairly consumed by the idea that someone had keys to the cars, I've been saying, "Let them take the cars." Our newest car (coincidentally, Blue) is eleven years old. It's not as if they're priceless, heirloom collectibles. Plus, if someone's pulled over driving my car, that's proof that they took it, especially if they're driving with my keys. We may not get a burglary conviction, but by golly, I can get grand theft auto if you take my car. I'll take grand theft auto. I'll take any chance to nail a thief. As a bonus, if they have my keys, that's a pretty clear indicator that they robbed my house, and should be good for a search warrant on their house(s). Ironically, justice is most likely to be served if they robbed me again.

                     Let's call that "Mistaken Assumption #2." "Mistaken Assumption #1" had apparently been, "It's no one that we know." M had seen what had happened, and named, for us and for the police, two teenage boys from our neighborhood. From his front door, you can see both of their homes. Both these boys are in the same grade as my son, and were his close friends when they were younger.

                    I phoned the police department, and they confirmed that M had filed a report the day before. "You have the make, model and plate number in the original report from the burglary," I told the woman on the phone. "Is someone out looking for my car?"

                   "Well, no," she said, sounding surprised that I'd asked. "It's not considered stolen until you come down here and sign a release."

                    A release? "My neighbor filed this report yesterday, but you're not considering the car stolen yet?"

                    "Well, no. We can't take his word for something of yours. It will be considered stolen after you fill out the paperwork and sign it. I can send an officer over."

                     I now know how long that can take. "My daughter's here from out of town, and we have 6:00 reservations. Is there any way you can give me a ballpark time frame on when someone will be here?"

                    "No. That all depends on what other calls come in. You can come down here instead."

                    So now I can come to the station. "We'll do that."

                    "OK! We're open til 9:00."

                    It turns out that, in this deeply litigious society, even police work is governed by fear of lawsuits. They can't look for my car until I sign the paperwork in case my neighbor is mistaken about my car being stolen, and I have in fact loaned it to someone or driven it away myself. They don't immediately begin looking in case it's a waste of time, and to prevent pulling over someone who's authorized to use the vehicle and will now sue the department for emotional damages, harassment, or whatever other rot they can convince a bottom feeding litigator to file for them. The fact that in this case, it was on file that my keys were missing, the suspects are 14 and unable to drive legally, and snuck into the car in the dark, still doesn't tip the scale toward theft.

                    So if we'd been out of the country for a month, we'd be totally screwed.

                    And for good measure, the responding officer asked M, "Are you sure it wasn't your own kids?" So, my neighbor does the right thing by seeing a crime and reporting it; but, it doesn't help us any, and he gets to feel harassed. All the public service announcements in the world about how people need to be involved and step up to help others isn't going to convince people to deal with this level of hassle. It just seems to me that the appropriate response would have been, "Thank you sir. Your neighbors are lucky to have you." Are manners passe'?

                     I realize that the police department has to deal with loons all the time, people who decide to call in a report that their neighbor is a meth dealer not because any meth deals are going on, but because someone's dog pooped on the wrong lawn. I can't blame the police for the crackpots. I try not to blame them for being jaded and assuming that everyone's a liar; in return, shouldn't law enforcement save a teeny bit of room in their minds for the idea that some crimes will actually be reported accurately?

                    Years ago, before identity theft was a common occurrence, someone used my info for various purposes, including credit cards in my name. I will never forget watching the officer with whom I filed a report react to the news that I knew the person (and she'd taken my license out of my wallet). "What did she say about why she wanted the credit cards?" he asked. I'm pretty darned sure that he NEVER looked a mugging victim in the eye and said, "What did he say about why he wanted your wallet?" Again, I'm clear on the fact that it's the people who file false reports and who use the police department to settle their personal grievances that causes this distrust, but again, I expect the PD to behave as if not everyone outside their department is scum.

                     This annoys me so deeply because I have always seen the cops as the good guys. Always. I was the kid who reached out and whacked the arms of any of my buddies who said, "I smell bacon!" as officers passed. I do not become uneasy and check my speedometer when I see a patrol car. The majority of my favorite TV shows are cop shows.

                     I also hate the second guessing people tend to do after a crime has been uncovered. People are human; they will make honest mistakes. One of the most common is the most understandable, the assumption we all have that the simplest explanation is the truth. This is a commonly held belief because often, it's true. Sometimes it's not. Remember when the man in Austria was arrested for keeping his daughter in a dungeon under their house? I talked to a friend who said, "His wife had to know! She said she heard odd noises. She said food would disappear from their kitchen." Now, assume that food is missing from your kitchen. Do you think, #1, someone ate it without permission, or #2, my husband must have a secret dungeon under the house? Exactly. If you hear an odd noise, do you think, #1, we have a rodent problem, or #2, there's sex slaves underground?

                     With kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard, it's heartbreaking to think that an officer was called to the house where she was held three years ago but never set foot in the house or backyard, and yes, the officer seems to have been negligent. But, we can't ignore the fact that he could have searched the house and what appeared to be all of the yard and seen nothing amiss. If someone told you that your neighbor was a sex fiend with children living in tents in his backyard, especially if the neighbor seemed generally unhinged anyway, would you immediately think, "I'll bet he's had captives for almost two decades"? Cops are human.

                     So here I am, firm believer in good cops and forgiving the flaws of human nature, and I still feel that justice is not being served. It's so disheartening.

                     Dan went down and signed the paper so our car could be classified stolen, and was told, guess what? Go home and wait for an officer. They have to come to the scene and interview you.

Goodbye, evening plans. Hello takeout pizza, TV and a frustrating wait.

                     At 10:30 that night, they found our car. It was running on fumes, parked only a few blocks from our house. No driver, no passengers, no fingerprints, nothing to indicate who had driven it. Such a letdown.

                     In the meantime, we had all discovered that at least three people who recognize the boys and the car had seen them driving it in the past 24 hours. They'd apparently showed off a bit, and given neighborhood teenage girls a ride. The officer who waited at our car seems convinced that we all know who did it. He said that they'd talk to the witnesses and the boys in the next day or two.

                      It's been 5 days. We've heard nothing, seen no police cars at the boys' houses, and none of the witnesses have been interviewed. I know we're not #1 on the to-do list, but I'd like to know that we're ON the list.

                      Meanwhile, knowing who these boys are has brought a whole new level to the proceedings. These are boys who spent hours in our house and our pool. They came to the family Easter egg hunts. My son spent many nights at sleepovers with them. Long ago, they were his best friends.

                     When they stopped spending time together, I assumed it was just one of those things – kids change. We still smiled, waved, said hello, occasionally loaned them things. It's a small neighborhood, and most everyone knows everyone else. Now I can see that perhaps there were more profound reasons the friendship withered. The contrast between my son, who gets $10 per month allowance (and tithes $1 of that) and regularly saves up to buy $50 and $60 video games, and someone who'd rather steal them, is pretty stark.

                        My husband is alternately furious and depressed that someone we know, someone who spent so many hours with our family, has so little regard for us. He is enraged when we see these boys around the neighborhood and they smirk. Word on the grapevine is that they've joined a gang. I wonder if we were an initiation.

                         My life experiences, fortunately or unfortunately, have prepared me for the idea that people close to you can have no regard for you, your family or your safety. What bothers me is all the memories that are now tainted, all the photos in the albums that we will no longer want to look at. These boys have spoiled my memories.

                        Terry said, "They're not doing any good to the stereotypes about their color." No, they're not. They did not commit these crimes because of their race. But, looking at my lily white, blond son and these dark, black haired boys, all many people will see is the color line. That's the kind of behavior that causes people to justify their prejudices. It's so frustrating to see people complain that they're stereotyped but then act in a way that cements the prejudice.

                       If my son behaved this way, I'd want someone to throw the book at him. It's not about who these boys are, whether we know or like them, or about their color. It's about behavior. This behavior is unacceptable. It also doesn't matter if you're young, old, rich, unemployed or anything else. This behavior is unacceptable.

                      When we picked up the car, I said to the officer, "What do we do now? They have the keys. They'll just drive away with it again." His reply was, "Yes, ma'am, we know."

                      I'm back to hoping that someone will steal my car, so they can be caught driving it.

                      My mother is 80; my dad died at 78. Neither of them ever had a car stolen; this is the second time we've had one stolen. They never had their house broken into. They never had their identity taken. They never, in lifetimes almost twice as long as mine, worried that their neighbors might know when the house was empty; they counted on their neighbors to watch it when they were gone. They rarely locked their doors. I just ordered a whole house alarm. If a child ever disappeared, the worry was that the child had drowned, not that they'd been kidnapped. No one ever would have said, "Was s/he alone?"

                     The world my children live in looks very different.

                     What's wrong with this picture? Why aren't more of us outraged?

******************************************

So, now, the "almost three years have passed" update:

We never did get anything back. When the boys were (FINALLY!) questioned, they denied any knowledge of a break-in, but one hinted that he might be able to lay hands on some of the stuff if he got a reduced sentence.

He obviously needn't have bothered negotiating for leniency. Apparently leniency is the name of the game. If the boys spent any time in juvenile detention, it was a matter of a few days, as we didn't see them ever noticeably absent from the neighborhood.

Most of the time, I'm not angry directly at the boys any more; resentment is counterproductive. We've run into some of their relatives, including one boy's mother, around town. We smiled, we made pleasant conversation. The boys' behavior may or may not be any reflection on the rest of their family or friends; heaven knows that I don't want to be held responsible for the actions of everyone I'm related to or know. The only real problem I have with both sets of parents is that no one ever apologized to any of us or tried to make any kind of amends. That might be because they're completely embarrassed; it might be because they're enablers. I'm not going to waste too much energy worrying about which it is.

I have noticed both an infant and infant furniture and trappings at both of their houses lately. I don't know if there's one baby or more, or who might be the parents. I do admit to not feeling entirely at ease with the thought of what kind of person this child or children might turn out to be.

Remember the kids who saw them driving the car? At least one was offered, but turned down, a ride. Two of those kids, kids who had also been my son's friends since they were about 6 years old, gave formal statements to the police, as did their parents. They agreed to testify at any kind of hearing, should they be asked. (They never were.) The officer who dealt with them was astonished. "We never get that kind of cooperation," he said. "Never. Sometimes either the kid or the parent will be willing, but never both, and we never have corroborating witnesses." There are not words to express how those two families delight me. Should they ever need my time, my money, my internal organs, they can have them.

My son was overloaded with gifts of knives and swords over the next year or two; his collection is larger than it was. It's in his room, now. For one thing, after finding out who the thieves were, the fact that they spent so little time in Alex's room makes more sense - at least one of them is terrified of reptiles. The snake and monitor lizard in his room now are better than a watchdog, and right next to the bedroom door.

We also have reptiles in the living room - a space issue, but there are other benefits. There's now a snake cage right next to the front door (directly underneath the key rack). This fact tickles me more than it really should. It's not a decent home safety plan, but it is a little bonus for having pets that we love and others don't.

Alex always kept his cash with him, afraid that if he left it at home, it might disappear, the way our carefully hoarded remodel money did. Then, he went to a sleepover with several other boys, and his wallet, with approximately $300, all of his ID and the gift cards from Christmas, was "lost." (Again, we're sure that it was one of the boys that we didn't know.) Now, with a job, he's keeping his money in the bank and carrying a debit card. Live and learn.

To his credit, he never felt unduly singled out or personally attacked after the robbery. When his little sister wondered out loud why her pricey American Girl dolls, furniture and accessories were left alone, when many of them cost far more than the knives, he was very matter of fact about it. "They took stuff they wanted. Even if they were selling the stuff, they wouldn't have thought that dolls were valuable." (I thought about the idea that the robbery might be gang related, and pictured the boys showing up to meet the gang leadership or the fence with their haul, saying, "It's a Samantha - she's retired!" It was an amusing picture.)

 It's no longer deeply painful to look through our family albums and see the younger versions of these kids. For the first year or so, my daughter would make a noise like a siren every time she saw one - "EEEEEEEE - it's T!" Now, we've all kind of compartmentalized; we used to know two boys that no longer exist. It's sad only in an ordinary kind of way, like when someone moves away and you lose touch. Things happen.

I try not to be angry at the law enforcement system. It's overburdened, I know. I'd still like a return to the days when law enforcement would turn out with figurative bells on to get a cat out of a tree. I miss Mayberry.

My sense of safety will never be quite the same. Welcome to "the new normal." It's an OK place to visit, but it looks like we'll have to make peace with living here.