Paradise, Children’S Innocence Stolen By Too-Close Crimes

It was spring when the young couple moved into that little white house. Its quaint Victorian charm welcomed them from the front porch all the way to the garden in the backyard.

The neighborhood was quiet save for the occasional hum of the city bus traveling its route.

The summer beckoned the young woman to plant in the rich soil of the garden. Late at night, when the hot sun had gone to bed and her husband worked the swing shift, she would take down the laundry from the clothes line, sit on the front porch with her devoted dog and count stars. The home was sweet and kind, enough room for the baby that was coming in the fall, a firstborn.

When her husband would return near midnight, the door was still open to encourage the cool air in and she felt safe. In the fall, she harvested the squash and carrots and prepared homemade baby food to store in the freezer until winter. The corn was enjoyed by visitors who were also sent home with zucchini, rhubarb and more squash.

The baby arrived on time. The winter came and went, the snow blanketing the little white house and making it seem even more like a home to her. A first Christmas tree went up for the baby. Her husband relished shoveling his very own driveway.

By the time summer came, she would again retreat to the backyard garden after the sun went down and the baby went down, too, this year for a little peace and time to herself.

As her baby slept and her husband worked, the world stood still, she and her dog, watching the grass grow, sitting on the front porch.

Another baby was on its way now. Winter was cold and unforgiving. The most snowfall most people could remember in quite a while.

One day footprints tracked where someone had tried to break into the garage where the much-coveted snow blower was kept.

It was unsettling to her, a stranger in the backyard, quietly planning to victimize them. Her husband put another lock on the old garage door and the world was quiet again. Until spring.

The newspapers seemed to explode with the news of gunshots, drive-by shootings here and gunshots heard there. Never before had she heard of such madness with guns. Working in the garden by the light of the moon didn’t seem like a good idea anymore.

She began taking down the laundry while the sun was still up. Playing outside with the baby was in short sessions. The bus would hum by, her little boy would squeal as it came into view, and it oddly comforted her when she was alone at night.

The dream died one morning when gunshots shattered the back window of her car, parked precariously close to her baby’s nursery window. Had they shot just a few feet to the left …

Down the block, reports of a drive-by shooting erupted. Not just in the newspaper anymore, but now in the neighborhood where she was raising her child, making a life with her husband, and living a dream.

The new baby came. It was time to go.

The new home was nice, a quiet neighborhood across town, and bigger for this growing family. A fenced yard for the dog, room for a swingset for the children. But no garden and no clothesline. And no front porch to sit and count stars.

She missed the old house, the place she had brought both babies home to. But it was safer here. For a little while.

The homeowners that had given such stability to her new neighborhood began to move away. Most of the homes became rentals. People she didn’t know left before she could meet them and new people arrived.

By the time another baby was born here, the car was broken into, just feet away from their window. Her son’s most cherished toy, an expensive gift from loving grandparents, disappeared from the backyard, even as the dog slept there.

Snow came, and excited children built a masterpiece, a snowman with all the trimmings. Within hours, it had been kicked over. It was a little thing, but not to the children, and it broke her heart that they were being victimized again.

The utopia is over. She wants to be able to take a walk without pepper spray, without having to tell someone where she is going, without waiting for the sounds of gunshots when a car drives by. She wants to tell her young son that he can walk the four blocks to the store for candy.

It will be spring again soon. She and her family will try once more to find the dream of a safe place to live, to grow and to learn, not about violence and crime, but of the way things used to be for them. The way things should be again.