First, let me issue, as they say on the Harry Potter fan sites, a spoiler alert: this column is not funny. Not in the least. It may not even be well written, seeing as it is Friday morning, and the column I was going to send in today–the one I had been working on all week–I am now going to lay aside in favor of this one, which, as I said before, is not funny. But it is about my children, so I think that it will still count.
Last night we were robbed. Sometime between eleven and two, while we were sleeping, someone came into our house, into my bedroom, went through my coat pockets and took the keys to my car. They then went into my office–the one I am sitting in right now–opened up my desk drawer and stole all the money my children had received for Christmas. They then left through the front door (we know this because it was standing wide open), passing–and here my heart nearly stops–passing Clementine where she had fallen asleep watching tv on the living room couch (it is still a holiday, after all).
No, our doors weren’t locked, which, really, is what this column is about. Our doors weren’t locked not because we were home that night, but because this is Flagstaff–or, at least, it used to be. My husband, who works all over the city, has been trying to tell me that for years. “Flagstaff is gone,” he says. “You don’t know, you never get out there, but it’s not the same. It’s changed.” And he’s right: I never do get out there. My Flagstaff–the Flagstaff of Pay’n’Take, Martannes, Bashas’ on the hill–the places where, really, “everybody knows your name”–these places have either stayed the same or gotten better. But those other Flagstaffs–the ones where people don’t let you make a left turn into Barnes and Noble, the ones with gates and guard houses, the ones where peoples’ cars are (bizarrely) worth more money than the gear on top of them–the ones where they walk into your house and steal your children’s Christmas money–are getting closer all the time.
I first had a foreboding of what was to come when Flagstaff police officer, Jeffrey Moritz, was murdered. I remember thinking, “What is happening to our little town?” That unease was dispelled, though, the day I stood on Humphrey’s street to watch his coffin pass: I was overwhelmed at the numbers of my fellow citizens that were standing with me. The line we formed went all the way to the top of the hill and beyond, and I couldn’t help but notice how we all must have looked like we were in some sort of a bucket brigade, but one that– instead of passing along buckets of water– passed along handfuls of hope.
I could use some of that hope right about now, when it feels like Flagstaff–the town I have lived in for 23 years, the town that I have always sworn I would never leave–has left me.
Still, there is always solace in words. Matthew Henry, a 17th century minister, once wrote the following lines on the occasion of his own brush with theft: “I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed.”
Maybe that’s my clue as to where to find my hope–and my Flagstaff–once again. A town can only be as good as the people in it, and the only person I can really change is myself. Because, to quote another great soul (Anne Frank): “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”