garden

The small, rectangular ceramic flower pots I kept in the two window sills of my bathroom had never budged an inch in the 14 years I owned the home, but one day I saw that one was close to falling out onto the counter below. I wondered if a small earthquake had caused it to move as I pushed it back in place. About a week later, I came home to find that the pot had actually fallen completely off the little ledge and onto the counter. This time I stopped to understand why, and I discovered that the small window was separated from the sill. I went outside. From there I could tell that the window had been pried from the house and someone had left a hacksaw on the ground. Evidently, I surprised whoever was trying to make their way into my home.

That day marked the end of my being blissfully unaware of the fact that there were people who were willing to commit crimes in my neighborhood. At the time, I was a single mom with a nine-year-old, and I felt a profound sense of terror. I locked the side gate and alerted my neighbors. The police couldn’t lift any fingerprints, so nothing ever came of the incident except how it affected me. It wasn’t long before I was interviewing home security companies.

I loved the system I chose. I could open the garage door and unlock the house from my key fob as I arrived home; I could even turn on the lights remotely or program them to come on automatically. If there was an intruder, a piercing alarm sounded and the security company would immediately notify police or the fire department if it was the smoke alarm.