When it came time for me to buy a house,
I purposely chose the Old Town neighborhood in Pocatello, Idaho,
where I live and work. The neighborhood can be described as
low-to-moderate income housing with many homes built as long as a
century ago. I love the eclectic atmosphere of lived-in houses,
each one individually designed and redesigned, no two alike, and I
love trees. Pocatello’s west side has some of the most beautiful
maples, elms, poplars, locusts, hawthorns, black walnuts and box
elders in town.
I have grass in my yard; I can’t call my
grass a lawn, but I manage to keep it mowed, pushing the jungle
back to make room for my table and chairs, a green bower for me and
my guests when a good glass of wine and conversation far past
twilight is called for. These past four years, I’ve felt safe in my
nest, but not long ago an incident rocked my confidence.
At 5 a.m. on a Saturday ,I was awakened by noise on my front porch,
someone rattling the doorknob, obviously trying to get in. At first
I thought it was my son, Edward, stopping by on his way to work,
until I looked at the clock. Then came a tinkling crash, and the
window in the door was shattered.
I got up to see a young
man reaching through the broken window to unlock the door. I called
911 immediately for help and yelled at the intruder. “Who are you?”
To my surprise, he answered, “Josh. I’ve come to hang out with
you.” The tall, rather good-looking young man with dark-rimmed
glasses and long brown ponytail had no idea where he was, and he
wasn’t anybody I knew. He appeared, as they say, “stoned out of his
mind.”
He’d cut his hand on the glass and stood still,
examining the blood closely; he then said, “Wow,” in a long slow
drawl reminiscent of a ’60s hippie discovering the universe on
acid. I ordered him to stay on the porch and wait for his “ride,”
and he did.
The police arrived and took him away while I
filled out reports and swept up the glass. The bill for
replacement, including molding and labor, came to $89, not a small
assault on my budget, not to mention the hassle of the ruined peace
of a precious Saturday morning.
The incident reminded me
of just how vulnerable we all are. In so many ways, our houses are
merely psychological barriers to those who might wish us harm.
I’m reminded of the years I helped raise cattle; how
easily a several hundred-pound animal that is upset can break loose
through a wooden or barbed wire fence, how cows really keep
themselves fenced in, choosing to play by their human masters’
rules as long as they are fed well, have fresh water to drink and
are allowed to mate and raise their young in peace.
We
are deluded if we believe our houses keep us safe; it’s the
unspoken social agreement we make with each other to respect
certain boundaries that does the job. If someone wants to come
after us, he or she will find a way no matter what fortress we
erect.
Perhaps President Bush and Vice President Cheney
and Attorney General John Ashcroft should consider this reality and
work to develop different relationships with our “enemies,” instead
of agitating them further by calling them “evil doers” and
“terrorists.”
But then, perhaps, it’s not really peace
our leaders want; it’s oil, and the construction of a pipeline
through a far-off desert that will make a handful of corporate
monkeys rich while the people living on the sidelines continue to
spend part of every year in near starvation.
Still, I’ll
return to the privilege of sitting in my garden, where I can pull a
segment of long grass to chew on, enjoy the peace its greenery
gives me as well as savor my neighbors’ respect for my house on my
plot of land. The social contract we harbor internally also keeps
passersby from destroying my little island of green – the contract
“Josh” breached when he unwittingly crashed my peace of mind.
Penelope Reedy is a contributor to Writers on
the Range, a service of High Country News in
Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). She lives and writes in Pocatello,
Idaho.
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