A9
LIFE
Wednesday, January 23, 2013 | The Cavalier Daily
Hardaway | Burglar steals iPad, purse, sense of security Continued from page A8 written to myself, reminders on how to live, what to do? I racked my brain; what had I not saved, what had I not preserved via email, what was that one-sentence document I had kept that I wanted to somehow include in my thesis? What was the value of that? That night, someone committed a “crime of opportunity.” And
I hope that it was just a random, unlucky, one-time thing. I know it could have been worse; what if my sister had been sleeping in her bed? Would this person have still walked into her room? What would have happened then? But, sitting here, typing on the laptop I borrowed from my sister, what happened doesn’t feel random. When I came into my house Saturday evening, rushing upstairs to get ready
for the night’s activities, I heard my sister’s muffled sobs coming from her tiny disheveled room. She was talking on the phone with my mother, “I don’t understand why, why?” she cried, attempting to hold the phone and straighten her hair and keep it all together because we were running late and she wanted to look nice and feel normal, but I knew she was starting to crack. She wanted to know why of all
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things someone had taken her favorite purse, the one that traveled with her to London and back, the one that held only $10 and some receipts. I want to reclaim my home, I don’t want to have to share my twin bed with my sister, lying awake until five in the morning, because we heard the screen door slam. I’ve lost that feeling I had when I was 12, that feeling of invincibility, of total faith in
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what a home can do, what it’s supposed to do. And even when I neurotically start to lock my front door and my back door and my bedroom door and every window in my house, I’m not sure if I’m going to get that feeling back. Mary Scott’s column runs biweekly Wednesdays. She can be reached at m.hardaway@cavalierdaily.com.