Imprint

… so I ran from her as quick as my tiny legs would take me, first through the kitchen and then into the hallway…

As I chase Lucy, our new puppy, down the hallway after she has just peed on our rug, it evokes a memory from early childhood, not just any memory, but what I am certain is the first one I have of my mother, a young mother and a young me, somewhere between two and three years old, having just done something I wasn’t supposed to do, although what exactly I can’t recall, and her taking what she felt were the necessary steps to punish me and prevent me from doing it again, and like most young children I didn’t like being punished so I ran from her as quick as my tiny legs would take me, first through the kitchen and then into the hallway, which in my memory is so big that every footstep echoes but in reality only spans about ten feet, and I end up in my room, where in the corner sits a play tent decorated with Disney characters and that because it is white and the room is dark is practically glowing and lures me to jump inside and hide, even as I hear my mother’s voice yelling my name from down the hall, her Filipino accent getting stronger as she becomes enraged by my disobedience, with each threat I feel my fear growing inside the tent, the thin nylon walls unable to protect me and where eventually my mother’s shadow appears and grows menacingly as she approaches, and after she finds me, I receive a firm spanking that is as much about my mother’s need to release her frustration as it is about correcting my behavior, but what has stayed with me through the years is how consumed with anger she was and how fearful I was of her, the person who at that point in my life I loved the most.

Robert Grubbs is a clinical psychologist who provides therapeutic services to children, adolescents and families. Previously published in several academic journals, this is his first publication in creative nonfiction. Robert currently works and lives in Chicago with his partner and their dog, Lucy and spends his free time writing and wishing for the warm weather of his childhood in the South.

Photo by Ellen Blum Barish

The Bath

By the time I was born, my father was already lost to his demons, bound by choices that would seldom include me. He was a man who lived in our house who liked fried eggs, bacon and peanut butter toast for breakfast and made great sandwiches. He laughed too little and drank too much. He was my father, yet when he died, more than his passing, I mourned the fact that I couldn’t point to a place in my life where he had ever been.

… each year on Fathers’ Day I tried to remember something about him that made me smile.

In deference to our biological link, each year on Fathers’ Day I tried to remember something about him that made me smile. I gave it a good try for the first few years, but I was never able to come up with anything that didn’t make me angry, and so I stopped trying and stayed angry. Angry that I could never be pretty enough, smart enough, responsible enough, funny enough for him to choose me instead of vodka shots with his barroom buddies. Angry that I grew into a woman whose goal in life was to make men love her, forgiving them anything in order to keep them close, running from conflict and fearing rejection. Angry that every major event of my life had been spoiled by his being at some stage of the binge process. Holidays, birthdays, piano recitals and graduations, he managed to pretty much ruin them all. Worst was the night before my wedding, when following his absence at the rehearsal, I had to search him out and sober him up so that he could walk me down the aisle without weaving. I was angry that he lived and died without our touching on any level. Who wouldn’t be angry? Anger was my just due and I held onto it until it owned me as surely and completely as my father’s demons had owned him.

But there was a warm summer evening when, while coaxing my reluctant one-year-old granddaughter out of her bath, I remembered a line from a song and sang it to her as I held up a towel to wrap her in.

“Stand up and sing for your grandmother, an old time tune.”

I sang the refrain over and over, until, laughing her contented, waterlogged, clean baby laugh, she stood up, and we got on with our bedtime ritual.

Later, while she slept, the melody lingered, but this time it caught my attention. Where did it come from? Had I sung it to my own children when they were small? Had I made it up? With my eyes still shut and in that special place we go before giving in to sleep, I remembered the ’40s bathroom with its petal pink bathtub and sink, grey plastic wall tiles, and black and white octagonal ceramics on the floor. I could see myself as a child being bathed by my father, his face young and smiling, his voice singing to me while he held out a lime green towel trimmed with silver threads to wrap me in.

“Stand up and sing for your father, an old time tune!”

I opened my eyes. I was wide awake. And smiling.

Since then, I have recalled another song,

“Dance with the dolly with the hole in her stockin’ and her knees keep a rockin’ and her knees keep a rockin’ Dance with the dolly with the hole in her stockin’ and her knees keep a rockin’ all night long”…

I can see how his hands looked; smell his bathroom fragrance of mint, Wildroot and Old Spice on those mornings when his head was clear and his eyes bright; feel him standing close while he patiently taught me to bounce an orange off my forearm and catch it with the same hand; and I hear his voice saying “I love you” once on a flight home from Minneapolis.

I wish there were more things to remember. I long for albums of smiling pictures of the two of us together on Christmas, or on my birthday, or on family vacations making castles in the sand. But what we are given needs to be enough. Even if it shows up unexpectedly with me on the edge of a bathtub with a towel in my hands, singing to my granddaughter.

Ann Fiegen is a joyously retired mother and grandmother, who at long last has the luxury of time to devote to writing and the soul satisfying creative outlet that it provides.

Photograph is a screen scan of the sheet music for “Stand Up and Sing for Father an Old Time Tune” recorded by Billy Murray, June 1921. For a listen, click here.

Smoke Screen

Imagine the nerve: My dealer had gone out of town without informing me beforehand. So I was all out. Every last roach incinerated, I was reduced to coaxing “hobo-highs” from thick black resin extracted from deep within my paraphernalia. This could have been a good opportunity to clear my head a bit, go a week or two without smoking. But that was wishful thinking.

“Weed made the things I already liked – movies, rap, heavy metal, crime fiction – sparkle.”

Pacing around my apartment, I thought through my options. I had made a rookie mistake, becoming so dependent on this guy Seth, not bothering to develop back up connects. People bought drugs on the street, from strangers who didn’t pretend to be your friend, all the time. Why couldn’t I? But where exactly did such things happen?

Looking through the newspaper, I came across a short article buried deep in the metro section. A young man had been shot to death the previous night on a west side street “known for drug activity.” Brilliant! I piloted my parent’s hand-me-down Volkswagen there tout-suite.

The neighborhood was residential, streets of red-brick bungalows connected by a main thoroughfare with liquor and convenience stores, and many empty lots. Nowhere did I see any bustling open-market drug activity, so I approached a group of white-tee clad males. “Any of you guys know where I can buy some smoke?” I asked. “You want coke?” one of them replied. I told him I did not, which seemed to end the conversation. Twenty minutes went by as I awkwardly loitered in the area until a car pulled up. The man riding shotgun addressed me. “You the guy looking to buy some ‘dro?” Indeed, I was. We did our exchange in the entryway of a fast-food joint with bulletproof glass between the patrons and employees.

I viewed this expedition as little more than an inconvenience. A week later, my dealer came back from California and we continued our civilized appointments in the comfort of my apartment or his car. That winter, he got pulled over with a quarter-pound, but was kind enough to refer me to his friend and occasional co-rapper, Epik. Epik was unemployed and all too eager to drop by on short notice.

I tricked myself into thinking that the way I smoked, while maybe not normal, was at least acceptable. A little something in the morning to make the prospect of schlepping off to work tolerable. Nothing on my lunch break though; that was only for the truly desperate. Not that I didn’t consider it. I could wait another few hours until after work. That second smoke of the day was nearly as good as the first. Depending on the evening, a couple, three more sessions before I retired for the night.

With real, solid motivation, I could quit for a month or two, long enough to pass a drug test when applying for work. But once I got a job, it was off to the races. Being stoned seemed to make everything better. I tried not to show up to certain places – like my grandmother’s house, important meetings – too stoned. But even at events I looked forward to, it wouldn’t be too long before I’d be checking my watch, wondering when I could slip away to blaze. Weed made the things I already liked–movies, rap, heavy metal, crime fiction–sparkle. I wouldn’t immerse myself in these things, I’d be submerged. Exhilarating, transcendent. Issues, whether personal, artistic or philosophical, could be examined at a distance, and occasionally seen in a new light. And smoking took some of the sting off of life’s travails. As Napoleon said about champagne, in victory you deserve it, in defeat you need it.

In college, I had a proper stoner crew. Friends who liked to smoke at acceptable, party times, as well as less designated times, like between classes and as a study break. But a couple of years out of school, I stopped making those types of friends. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I had no one around to goad me to smoke more, or front me bowls when I was all out. My friends knew I smoked, but not how much or how often.

As time went on, when stoned, I spent more and more time thinking about how I needed to quit smoking. That and brainstorming a great heist screenplay. After a month of writing every day, I re-read the script. It made no sense. All my adult life, I’d viewed pot as part of my creative process, my creative identity. When high, every idea seemed priceless, every phrase that popped into my head utter poetry. Rereading that script, a thought dawned on me: maybe getting my stoned thoughts on paper wasn’t just a challenge, it wasn’t worth it.

For almost a decade, I had been trying a variety of strategies to keep my smoking in check. I’d give my stash to a roommate for him to hold, only to ransack his room to find it. I divided my bag into a dozen smaller portions, and hid those behind furniture and under mattresses, thinking that having all my pot together in a central location was tripping me up. This approach would inevitably lead to a demented Easter egg hunt for all my mini-stashes, and the crazed belief that one more was out there in some nook I had forgotten. Later I started buying individual grams instead of eighths or quarter ounces, again figuring that having less around would limit my consumption. Every night, I would promise myself that tomorrow would be the beginning of something new, a couple days off, a week or two, or quitting altogether. But to do so, I’d need to start with a clean slate, have no pot around, so I might as well smoke the rest of what I had. Then tomorrow would come around, and after some pangs of guilt and shame, I’d go ahead and buy some more, glad that I had voiced my promise to no one else.

When stoned, the prospect of quitting seemed like the only way forward. When sober, it seemed impossible. The pot was making me miserable. My girlfriend, who avoids pot because it gives her panic attacks, grew tired of being around me when I was high and asked me not to smoke around her. I chose to interpret this very literally, and would race home, get high, wait an hour, then go over to her house, hoping I wasn’t too visibly stoned. I’d always relied on my ability to come off as mostly straight when baked. At some point, this morphed into an ethical sanction: if people couldn’t tell I was high, it wasn’t an issue. The stank of a joint gave me away, though, and my girlfriend smelled it on my sweater. I could apologize all I wanted, but the writing was on the wall. It was her, or the pot.

The next day, I looked up Marijuana Anonymous on the internet. A week later, I worked up the courage to check out a meeting. Eight or nine friendly and burnt out looking people were sitting in folding chairs, giving each other strength and reminding each other that weed wasn’t as harmless as many insist. I started going to meetings regularly, and for the first time in years, put long weedless stretches together. I even got a sponsor for a while, an intense carpenter named Rich with ten years sobriety. He’d yell at me when I told him I was doing okay. “I guess you’re just a special snowflake, then, the most well-adjusted guy to ever go into recovery.” I wasn’t in touch with my feelings and, dripping sarcasm aside, he probably had a point.

Over time I discovered that part of what drew me into smoking was the way it made all varieties of uncomfortable feelings – anger, disappointment, boredom, sadness – seem remote, if not disappear completely. What had started out as a badge of rebellion and self-styled outlaw identity had morphed into something more nefarious: a shield against experiences, emotions, even the people I loved. When I stopped smoking, I was inundated with thoughts and moods I had effectively avoided for years. It felt like eternity, marinating in these emotions for hours or days when I had grown so used to being able to flick my lighter and change the channel. After three months, I stopped calling Rich, and eventually stopped going to meetings; the obsessive thoughts came less often, and were less intense. At a friend’s wedding recently, I even smoked a bit, and had fun, but it didn’t feel as good as I remembered. A year and a half after I stepped into that first MA meeting, what I really miss are those reclusive times when smoking turned books, movies and music up to a chemically enhanced 11. There’s the trade off: I’ve lost that escape hatch, but the veil protecting me from life, glorious, messy, complicated, brilliant life, has been lifted. I’m trying to fully embrace this new life, but part of me feels left behind. Even as life seems more vibrant than ever, part of me wants to retreat from the slings and arrows, retreat back behind the smoke screen.

Timothy Parfitt grew up outside Chicago and in Hannover, Germany. His film and music reviews have appeared in TimeOut Chicago, Wassup and on his blog, IllWatchAnything.com. This is his first published essay.

Photograph by Jen Clar

Finding Nancy H.

The portrait is enormous, two feet by three feet, black and white and impossible to hold in his shaking hands.

“She’s eighteen in this photo,” he whispers. Congestive heart disease keeps his volume low and his comments short. “Was building my portfolio in New York.”

“What a face,” I’m enchanted by it: round and milky, it’s untouched by age or experience. Her dark eyes trust the camera unequivocally.

“An actress, she moved to L.A. or Arizona.”

A life is simply too rich, too nuanced, to convey in six weeks of compressed conversations with a random caregiver.”

We’re in John’s spare bedroom in an assisted living facility outside of Chicago, touring sixty years of his work. Some photos are experiments in techniques that were new in 1955. Others are bread-and-butter shots for catalogs. An ad for Sears involves a mini-skirted housewife and what looks like a real tiger.

In the next six weeks I’ll get to know John‘s feelings about hospice, the pope, and everything French; I’ll manage his cranky moods, exacting instructions and occasional incontinence and admire his self-discipline as he forces himself to go without painkillers so he can play a game of Dominoes with his daughter or chat with the woman he loves.

I’ll know him intimately, and yet not at all, because I’ve never walked with him, shared weekly golf games or French conversation classes or a difficult photo shoot with a live tiger. I could ask a thousand questions—Was the tiger his idea? How did he feel when he was sweeping mines in the Far East, and did he tell his mother? How did he meet his wife and how did she die? But I still wouldn’t know him. A life is simply too rich, too nuanced, to convey in six weeks of compressed conversations with a random caregiver. There’s something reassuring in this, and also something frustrating. People want to be known and embraced at the end of life, and caregivers do try—but it’s a blind and awkward dance, complicated by pride, fear, and the indignities of illness.

I slide the photos back into the leather portfolio.

“Can you find her?” he asks. “Nancy Haley. LA or Phoenix. I want to send her the portrait.”

Some years ago, my mother found herself in a nursing home, a concept she may or may not have understood by then. When I appeared one day with a twelve-pack of Coke and a New York Times, two of her favorite things on earth, she rushed toward me. “It’s you!” she said. “Oh, what a sight for sore eyes!” I’m not sure whom she recognized at that moment—me, or her own sister, or one of my sisters. She knew I was a relative and a visitor, and she showed me around.

Next to every resident’s door was a glass display case filled with remembrances and photos, a kind of visual biography. I understood why. For residents who could no longer read, the display cases were billboards announcing who lived where. For residents missing home, the cases offered little pieces of the familiar. For visitors, staff, and other residents, the cases served as short introductions to the person within. We paused to look at a few. I was struck by how static and lifeless they were, how closely they resembled museum cases filled with the symbolic artifacts of long-dead pioneers or poets or Victorians. The living threads that connected the objects were imperceptible. I was also struck by my mother’s lack of interest. What she really wanted to do was drink a cold Coke.

We never filled my mother’s display case. She wasn’t there long enough. And I was ambivalent anyway. What should we include? Wasn’t this very process reductive? Doesn’t it suggest that a life can be characterized by its remnants? Wouldn’t it upset my mother to see her own long and productive life encapsulated with a couple of photos, a degree from University of Pennsylvania, and a seashell?

And worse, what if my mother didn’t recognize her own life?

On a stray Saturday, I consider what I would put in my own display case. A book I wrote. A picture of my husband. Maybe a bar of dark chocolate.

But what about the ocean—my one lifelong passion? What about my writing friends in faraway places? The three great dogs in my life? And the incorporeal elements that keep me living: wishes still brimming, books to be written, the care I’m giving?

This is a terrible exercise. It forces summary and concrete thinking. It’s a treasure map without the smell of salt water, or the surge of discovery or advice from a friend.

A few days later, I start looking for Nancy Haley. I soon discover that Nancy Haley is an artist who has let her website expire, a distinguished alumna from Michigan State University, and a middle-aged designer of stylish golf wear. There is also a deceased Unitarian minister who once produced a film about Hmong refugees, as well as a beautician in Kentucky and a lawyer in Ohio. In L.A., there are seventy-three Nancy Haleys; in Arizona there are five.

For many of them, Haley is the married name, discernable by references to husbands and children. As an actress, John’s Nancy would not have changed her name — good news for me. Nonetheless, none of the Nancy Haleys match the age and location I need.

She can’t have disappeared entirely? Not even an obituary? Not a film credit?

That’s when I remember shooting film footage of random customers in San Francisco International Airport for United Airlines many years ago, and how a crazy woman dashed up to me waving an umbrella. She was plump and dark-haired and angry that we’d taken her picture. “No! No!” she fussed. “You can’t do that! It’s against SAG rules! You have to throw it out. Please throw it out! You promise you’ll throw it out?”

“Yes,” I assured her while my cameraman snickered.

Relieved, she walked away, followed by an assistant carrying four suitcases.

But then she was back again, still with that oversized umbrella. “I’m sorry,” she said, placing it in front of her like Gene Kelly, poised to tap dance in the rain. “You must think I’m a crazy woman.”

“No,” I said, while my cameraman snickered some more.

“I’m Shirley Temple,” she said. “That’s why you can’t use footage of me.”

Then she smiled and sure enough, there was the girl from the Good Ship Lollipop.

SAG. Screen Actors Guild, the union that represents 160,000 actors. Why didn’t I think of that?

But the member directory is protected by a log-in.

Back in John’s spare bedroom, I explain the situation. If I knew one more detail about Nancy Haley—that she loved knitting or had a son named Willard — I could find her. But what I know is so limited, bones only, and she’s in her eighties, probably not a big Internet user. “Do you remember anything else?”

We’re inventorying the drawers, a painstaking process. With each artifact I learn some new fact. He used to smoke pipes. He balances his checkbook. He reads the weekly bulletins from Saint Francis Xavier Church. I wonder which of these artifacts would he choose for his own display case?

“You never saw Nancy Haley in a film?”

We’ve moved to the living room. Eight French cookbooks. Two antique chests he refinished himself. A lovely photo of his wife.

“You don’t know anything else?”

He summons his breath. “Hadley, not Haley,” he whispers. “I think it’s Hadley.”

Nancy Hadley is easier to find. She was once Joey Bishop’s TV wife; she appeared on Bonanza, Perry Mason, and The Millionaire, and, in 1958, she apparently kissed Clint Eastwood. She appears to be alive and settled outside of L.A.

John is amazed. There’s an address.

We smile together for a very long time. For half an afternoon, we’re partners in the present tense. We’ve shared something outside his illness. Something with hope and connection in it. And generosity. His is a true and generous impulse.

Now, in a room filled with children, grandchildren, and neighbors, I sign a guest book, and wonder who will ever read it. Who besides John would know all the names?

A slideshow runs continuously. People recognize themselves or events. Stories are told and retold. Old acquaintances spot each other across the room. French music plays softly. The love and connection in the room are palpable; the invisible threads that connect people vibrate as if the man is still alive and weaving them.

There are artifacts, too. John’s baby shoes are displayed on a central table, along with a pack of cards, a camera, belongings he treasured. Around the room, his photographs are displayed. There’s the one with the tiger. There are several of his beloved Paris. Would he have chosen these things?

Nowhere do I see the portrait of Nancy Hadley’s young, luminous face, and no one seems to know what I’m asking. A few head shakes. Children zoom around our legs.

Maybe the connection was never made. But I won’t mourn that as I squint in the bright light of the parking lot. Mostly I’m grateful to Nancy, for helping me find John Torrigan.

Lee Reilly’s essays have appeared in Hunger Mountain and the Florida Review and she has published two nonfiction books. You can catch her occasional blog about caregiving at www.OtherPeoplesParents.org.

Photo by Ellen Blum Barish

Crazy Bird

Seven months pregnant, with a pinched nerve in my back and feeling like a foggier version of my former self, crime in our neighborhood suddenly increased. Frank and I pulled into our driveway one night to find that the motion sensor light no longer turned on. In the morning, we discovered that the neighbor’s scooter was missing from our shared garage. Thieves in our yard?

Now, amidst acid reflux and swollen toes, I worried with newfound fervor.

So far, the items taken from our block included a UPS package containing a light-green bridesmaid’s dress, a mountain bike and moped, and most recently, a wallet, removed from our next-door neighbor’s kitchen counter while he was in another room. There had been no physical violence, but the ideas of criminals walking into people’s yards and homes made me extremely nervous. Plus, we had a new, yet-to-be-insured car and I really didn’t want anything to happen to it.

Earlier in my life, I had administrated an after-school program in an area overrun by gangs. I’d been drunk in metropolises around the globe – out during hours when nothing good happens – all with a carefree attitude, knowing I’d be fine. Now, amidst acid reflux and swollen toes, I worried with newfound fervor.

That July was particularly hot and I had grown enormous. Some days, I just sat in front of the air conditioner and watched Arrested Development reruns. I tried to cheer myself up by thinking more optimistically, starting by reframing my worries about the car.

I believe that our new car will be okay.

I bless our car and commit to thinking positively.

I will be responsible by locking it in the garage and by paying attention to what is happening in our neighborhood.

I guess that’s how my crime fighting started. With my decision to pay attention.

Here’s what I thought were the facts:

First, the “thieves” were most likely in high school since the onset of crimes coincided with the end of the school year.

Second, the police had bigger issues to address like the drug problem in a nearby public housing complex.

Third, if they were teenagers and no one responded, the thieving might escalate.

I wasn’t afraid of them the way one is of professional criminals who steal computers or fancy bikes or even the way one might be scared of gun-waving bank robbers. I was frightened of them the way one is of young people because they don’t know why they are doing what they are doing. Were they looking for a boundary? If so, there was no telling how far they’d go. I would respond by giving these thieves attention. My engagement of them needn’t be “nice” just an acknowledgement, a “Hey, I see you.” If they entered our yard again, I’d be ready.

I thought about hanging upside-down, fake blood-coated baby dolls and stuffed animals from the large tree that canopied the walkway alongside our house. It might freak them out just enough that they’d lose confidence. Then I considered the neighbors. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to explain the baby dolls. Our fellow renters had been amendable to my idea to sign for other peoples’ packages and take them inside so nothing got left on the porch, but I had to admit that nobody else seemed quite as enthusiastic about fighting crime as I was. Nor did they appear as fearful.

Some months before I was pregnant, I was jogging one day when a black and red bird suddenly shrieked from the top of a tree. The sound was striking so I stopped to look. When I lifted my eyes, the bird immediately dove at my head which I quickly covered with my hands and ran. “What a crazy bird,” I thought, until it occurred to me that maybe one of her babies had fallen out of the nest and I had wandered too close.

“Now I’m that crazy bird,” I thought.

I made a sign that read:

“You are being videotaped

No you’re not

Yes you are

Just kidding, you’re not.

But why not come over for cookies and lemonade

Instead of stealing things?”

Then I made another that read:

“Private eyes are watching you

They’re seeing your every move.

You probably don’t even know that song

But do you know the song

‘I gave up stealing scooters in August?’ ”

I taped one of my signs to the garage door.

I went inside and looked out at it through the window. Fastened with a piece of scotch tape, it had blown upside down against the garage so I couldn’t see the words. It looked small hanging there. Maybe the thieves wouldn’t see it.

That night someone broke into our neighbor’s mother’s car parked out front. The vandal broke her windows and rummaged through her belongings. I was going to need more than signs.

It occurred to me that the air conditioning units were preventing me from hearing what was going on outside. I shut them off at night and opened our second story bedroom window so I could watch from my bed. I was up every hour because the baby was pressing on my bladder and I had to pee. When I got up, I looked out the window and coughed loudly to scare anybody who might be out there. I’d occasionally yell things like “Hey!” or “What’s up, buddy?” in case someone happened to be sneaking around.

One evening Frank and I were inside building an Ikea baby dresser and it was really humid so I rolled my sundress down from the straps to below my belly, exposing my breasts. We had been playing music loudly and I hadn’t looked outside in over an hour. I panicked and impulsively ran over to the window, pulled up the blinds and screamed surprise! Frank shot me a “What the f— are you doing?” look and at the same time, while I saw that no one was in our backyard, there were two neighbors I didn’t know sitting directly across from me, smoking on their second floor porch, looking straight at me as I yelled, topless, from my window.

They were definitely surprised. I was too, both by my own behavior and their presence. It must have seemed like I was yelling at them. I was mortified. I shut the blinds and jumped into bed and hoped with my whole being that they would not understand what they just saw and therefore, promptly forget it.

I needed a better plan.

My main disadvantage as a community vigilante was that I didn’t know any neighborhood teenagers. Therefore I didn’t know their parents. If I were a teacher, I could guess who the perpetrators were, call them and hint that we were on to them, but I only knew musicians, social workers and the head of the Shakespeare Theater Company. Without access to the thieves, I couldn’t mess with their minds.

Thinking about this made me recall two boys I knew growing up who had thrown a bag of feces at a man. Until that day, their games had been harmless. They’d stop at large houses around dinnertime. One boy would ring the bell and distract whoever answered, while the other would go in the back to steal cakes and other tasty delights. One afternoon, who knows why, things escalated. As a man was driving by in a white Mercedes, the boys launched the bag and the shit exploded all over the interior. The man stopped and chased the boys. He wanted to know why. I imagine to this day he still wonders.

They must have been angry, but with whom? How could I possibly protect my baby from all of the under-nurtured, under-paid-attention to children growing older each day? In any case, there was no indication I was reaching any criminals with my signs or outbursts so I decided that the most effective way to proceed was to lock everything up.

Our garage door was already locked but another remained unlocked. Nobody really used the garage but since it belonged to all of us, I figured I should ask the other tenants’ permission before securing it. I knew this might take a day and the sun was setting so I started to think of ways to protect the garage for one final night.

I wanted something only the thieves would encounter. I settled on gum. I chewed several pieces of cinnamon Trident and carefully placed little balls of it on all the handles of the garage door. I didn’t tell Frank. I was in the zone. If a thief tried to raise the door, he would put his hand in chewed gum. He might be grossed out enough to exclaim or swear. Then I might catch a glimpse of him from my bed.

As a finishing touch, I grabbed a few post-it notes and wrote, “Voo Doo You!” On one of the yellow squares I drew a large puffy lightning bolt. Then I went inside, had dinner with Frank, watched some Antiques Roadshow, and went to bed. What I did not know then was that Jim, my upstairs neighbor, stored his mountain bike in the garage and that he went in there every night to park it.

Later that night I heard a noise. I thought I saw Jayson, our downstairs neighbor. I called out, “Jayson?” “No, it’s Jim,” Jim said as he opened the garage. I was stunned. Poor Jim was sticking his hands in my gum saliva. A few minutes passed in silence while he put his bike away. I was humiliated but had to say something. I said, “Hey Jim, um, you know Collin’s scooter got stolen and I was thinking of putting a lock on the other garage door. Would that be okay with you?”

“Yeah, I saw your sign.” I laughed nervously. Then he added in a neutral voice, “The lock is fine with me.”

I was relieved. “Cool, thanks.”

I went back to bed, embarrassed but happy that Jim said I could lock the garage.

The next day, Frank and I ran into Jim. He said nothing about the gum or yellow Post-It notes. He apologized for using the garage, said he heard I was a musician and would love to hear me play sometime. As we walked away, I said, “I can’t believe that guy let me off the hook. What a kind man.” Frank countered with, “It may be one of those things that was so weird that he didn’t even realize it. I think it didn’t register.”

I liked Frank’s sense of it. Then I remembered I’d better go buy a new lock.

Over the next few weeks, crime in our neighborhood subsided. My back felt better. I took walks although I always avoided the tree where that bird had caught me off guard. I never knew whether any of my crime-fighting tactics were useful or if crime would pick back up again. If it did, I imagined, I could be just like that mama bird, using my ever-watchful eye to scan for trouble and my willingness to make nosedives at passing teenagers to keep my neighborhood, and my baby, safe.

Anne Heaton is a singer-songwriter and pianist who has shared the stage with Jewel, Sarah McLachlan and jazz drummer Max Roach and has been featured in a New York Times Music podcast and on National Public Radio. Anne is a mother of two daughters and this is her first published essay. For more information, go to www.anneheaton.com.