Fate flashes, life changes

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/01/2020 (1553 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the trunk of my car is a small notebook, covered with soft floral fabric, stained only a little by the passage of many years. The notebook contains my first novel, a story of a heroine who gets embroiled in a pirate misadventure, eked out in blue ballpoint pen and the careful block letters of a five-year-old girl.

On the inside cover, I’d penned a dedication: “To my dad, whom has always enjoyed my work.”

Somehow, in the decades between then and now, this notebook found its way into a box of old stuff that my father kept in his garage. When I found it while rummaging a few years back, I showed him the precocious dedication. His blue eyes lit from inside with delight, and we laughed, savouring the missive from simpler times.

After he died in October, I thought about the notebook, and that dedication, often. It was another testament to the life we had together, an artifact for the mental museum I was curating of what it was to be his daughter. I don’t know why I didn’t bring it in from the trunk; another thing I keep asking myself now that I can’t think about anything else.

Would you still have stolen my car, if I’d told you about this notebook? Would you have stolen my car if you knew me as a daughter grieving a father? If I had stopped you as you casually strolled away with the keys you grabbed out of my coat pocket and told you this story, would anything have changed?

I don’t think so. Probably not. It almost certainly would have happened the way it did. You didn’t see me, not really, and that is almost the fact that’s hardest to face. I was a thing to you, a target or just an opportunity. Maybe someone in your life once made you feel the same way, and now you have passed that damage onto me.

For a moment, I wonder if you ever had that kind of love and support in your life, that my father held for me.

This isn’t the column I wanted to write. That night, I’d gone out to visit the tent camps that had sprouted beside the Disraeli Freeway, hoping to write about their eviction by the city. It was bitterly cold. My boots crunched on snow, breaking the silence that settled over the camps. At the time that I visited, no one was home.

I hoped they were warm. I hoped they were finding safe places to go. On the short drive back home, my mind filled up with writing, things to say about the civic crisis that is people forced to survive on the streets in this weather. And then I had another thought: if I’m going to be up late writing, I should get some fries.

So that’s why I was parked in that lot south of Confusion Corner. That’s why I walked into that fast-food restaurant that night, a place I’ve been a thousand times, following the sometimes erratic eating patterns of this journalist life. That’s why, when you saw me, I was quiet and alone and lost in thought.

Over the night that I lay restless and unable to sleep, I wondered many things. When did you decide to steal my keys and my car? Was it before or after you greeted me? “Let me hold the door for you, lovely lady” is what you said. I smiled and thanked you. I felt your shoulder bump me gently from behind, and I turned to see…

All of my life, I have been a firm believer and advocate that when property is all that’s at risk, then let it go. There is no property worth an exchange for one’s life. I wish I could say that’s what I was thinking when I stood frozen inside the vestibule, unable to chase you, unable to move, but the fact is this: I was just in shock. It was too surreal.

Shock, yes. And fear, too. I am scared now. Thirteen hours have passed, and I’ve been terrified during each one. I don’t think that’s what you intended. You didn’t try to hurt or threaten me. You just dangled my keys in your hand, nodded once and waved goodbye, before climbing into my car and, unsteadily, driving away.

After it was over, although my home is only a familiar 15-minute walk away, I was too scared to begin the trek. I called a friend to come get me, instead. I sat on my couch, my hands shaking. I called a locksmith to come change my locks, hands shaking. I called the restaurant to ask them to save the security camera footage, hands shaking.

Before this, I always felt reasonably safe. Not in a naive way; I have lived in Osborne Village my whole adult life. I tumbled through more than my share of dive bars and dank back lanes. I have been in tense situations and seen many worrying things, but they taught me how to navigate the world in ways that felt safe.

I do not feel safe anymore. It is embarrassing to say, because much worse things have happened to many other people. I was not injured. But the rules of my world have changed, the ones I had long developed to keep myself safe, and now I don’t know where the new ones are or should be.

To try and build them back, my mind races. I blame myself more than you; in my telling of this story, you too have become just a thing that happened, like a lightning strike or a blizzard. In my hunt to regain control I’ve gone over every decision I made a thousand times, wondering how it could have gone a different way.

Why did I decide to go into the restaurant instead of the drive-thru? I remember the moment I made that decision, and the reason: because I wanted to sit for a minute and just savour the time. Why did I put my keys in my pocket, instead of my purse? Because I was just walking a few steps to the door, no big deal.

Why didn’t I scream? Maybe someone would have come to help me. Why didn’t I whip out my hand and try to grab the keys back? Because it hadn’t quite registered what had just happened. Why didn’t I do anything to try and stop you? Well, it’s fight, flight or freeze, and now I know which one of those common responses to fear is mine.

There is no physical damage done. I will recover. But I do not know how long it will take to shake the feeling of violation, the sense of my world shrinking until there’s barely enough room to breathe. I wish I could share this sensation with you, so that you can know what it was that you really stole, and what has really been lost.

There’s no getting it back, though. Life will be changed, but it will simply have to go on.

Over the phone, the police ask if there were any valuables in the car. I try to focus my thoughts long enough to take mental stock. There were some boots in the trunk, not worn in years. A small pile of old clothes, stashed there on a camping trip months ago. And a notebook, dedicated to a father in a child’s careful block-printed scrawl.

No, I tell the cops. Nothing of value. Or at least, nothing that could ever be made whole.

 

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca