Losing a Sense of Security

Behind my house are woods. And behind those woods is a creek that runs 56 miles along two of the three largest counties in my state. It winds through six major urban areas and spills out into the Cahaba River. We expect to see the ring-neck snake in our flowerbed and the mighty population of lizards that live under each footstep and the red fox who appears on our front porch in the wee hours. What we didn’t expect is the pony-tailed, shirtless man in khakis and the redheaded, blue-eyed girl who bashed in a police car and sped off through our town only to escape on foot into the woods of our small neighborhood. They appeared to a few of our neighbors, looking disheveled and demanding help. Our neighbors said no.

It was the half-dozen police cars on our small street that caught my husband’s attention early in the afternoon. His reporter instinct sent him outside to question the cops – he found the chief of police in an unmarked car. (Love the local police department!) They had been searching most of the day and even they must have believed what we did – that the couple had wandered through the thicket at the edge of the creek, maybe waded waste-deep where the creek turns the bend, if not crossing at the rocky area where the kids often play. They may have known better than to take refuge in the forts made by some of the neighborhood boys, and continued on to the emptiness just downstream.

Still, the police told us to lock our doors and keep an eye out.

But my son loves the outdoors the way I love pedicures, and the minute he came home from pre-K he wanted to go outside and play baseball in the driveway. Rick and I looked at each other and I started to speak when Rick put his hand up to stop me. “Let’s not go there.” And he was right. So we went outside, locking the door behind us. The recent rain had washed away Truman’s sidewalk-chalked baseball field so he began redrawing the baselines. It was a beautiful evening, as most late spring evenings are here. It made no sense to be trapped inside. Before my son could finish chalking third base our neighbor walked over. He had opened a new red and wanted to share. The three of us went next door and ate their food and drank their wine and forgot to watch the news report on TV. We laughed and talked until the clock reminded us there were baths to take and nighttime stories to read. We made our way back through the gathering dusk to the safety of our home.

The Citizen’s Alert e-mail from the police department says the couple is still on the loose, so we will remain cautious. We’ll set the alarm and lock our doors. It is a small inconvenience, but more so, it is a wrinkle on the fabric our otherwise quiet neighborhood. The wanted couple may have taken nothing tangible from us, but they did take our sense of security. And that is just wrong.

Photo, Flickr, davidsonscott15