The Public of Private

I came home 2 nights ago to my back sliding door wide open, drawers riffled through, and my possessions tossed about. I was confused at first and then concerned that the assailant might still be lurking in the shadows behind my filing cabinet. After a thorough search of the one bedroom apartment (bat in hand) I determined that he (or she) had left and so had all of my jewelery.

It is never the loss of actual possessions that are mourned the most, it is the memories they hold (or in the case of the missing laptop, the data they carry). I started thinking about all of the pieces of jewelery that I had acquired since I was a young girl: the Birks bangles from my father that made me feel so grown up and special at 7, beaded and silver hoop earrings that I bought when I traveled alone in the South of France, a pearl ring that I fell in love with on a trip to Greece, and gifts that held so much love and always made me feel like I was secretly wearing a feeling or a happy memory instead of a piece of metal or a stone.

I scoured seedy pawn shops for a couple of days but to no avail.

The other disturbing thing about the incident was the feeling that my home was public space and not the cozy, private cocoon that I had invisioned it to be. It occured to me that living space is not private and that at some point everyone will have their home split open for a bit of an inspection. If you live in an apartment there is the landlord who might barge in at any point, there are home invasions, fires and floods that require emergency crews to plow through your home, nosey house-sitters, and ultimately death where every item you own will be picked through by (hopefully) a family member.

Note to anyone hoarding any creepy stuff - get rid of it!

I know this is really not in the spirit of Painted Table, but I thought this would serve as a good reminder to everyone to LOCK YOUR DOORS.

I did make a delicious and quick salad last night that I will share with you in my next post in case anyone was completely uninterested in this rant and stopped reading at the first sentence.