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Sparkle (2)
For seven hours yesterday, I lost the only thing I care about aside from my family: our memories.
I left my laptop unattended at a table at the bookstore to ask about a book and when I got back, my computer was gone. The thieves - ever so charitable - left my power cord. Thanks, guys.
I know I was naive, stupid even. Don't scold: I'm not the only one who gets up from my spot to get a refill from the cafe or use the bathroom. People do it all the time. Listen, all of you: DON'T!
Don't turn your back on your purse. Don't trust that your briefcase will be there when you get back. Don't think, "I'll only be gone a few minutes."
It only takes a second.
The woman I had been sitting next to - literally ten inches from - said she was so engrossed in her own work she didn't notice a thing. Her boyfriend said the same thing.
As the realization set in that I hadn't just lost my computer but I'd lost interviews for the book, photographs of the kids and countless videos taken when they were babies, my face fell in horror and my body flooded with... nausea, panic, disgust, grief. I paced the cafe and ticked through all the photographs I failed to back-up: the first day of preschool, Josephine and Desmond's 4th birthday, Esme's first day of first grade. Each new one I thought of felt like a hard right to the gut.
People stared and whispered. I eyed everyone suspiciously and wondered whether they stole my memories.
"That's why we tell people not to leave their things unattended," the store manager said when she heard the news. "You can call the police."
I got the impression this sort of thing happens all the time (AT THE BARNES & NOBLE AT POTOMAC YARD ... AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!).
She told me they don't have in-store cameras and after a spell she offered to let me use her phone to talk to the police.
They too were nonplussed by the theft. They didn't send someone to the store but instead took my name and number. "We'll have an officer call you in three days."
Swell.
I gathered my things and left the store - feeling naked and assaulted. I sat in the car in the parking lot and wailed. Screw the lost interviews. Who cares about the computer? But the photos? The videos? I thought of Esme after she had just turned 2 singing a mangled version of "Five Little Pumpkins" with elements of "Itsy Bitsy Spider," and I cried harder. A disturbing, mournful chorus of pain.
"This is crazy," I told myself. "No one died. No one is sick."
The loss felt devastating, though.
"You still have your memories," someone counseled later.
And yet, for me, nothing restores forgotten moments with the same immediacy and power as photos and film. I can recall what it felt like to hold Esme as I nursed her. I can remember how it slayed me to stare into her eyes. But neither of those memories can turn back the clock four years like watching this video.
I spent the afternoon and evening in a hard funk and asked Kent to get me an extra large helping of chocolate custard.
The phone rang shortly before 9. It was a police officer in Maryland, Kent said as he handed me the phone. "Did you lose a computer today?" the officer asked.
Turns out: the thieves got greedy. Brazen too. The officer told me that two men walked into Panera Bread in Annapolis and looked shifty enough to catch the attention of the manager. One guy acted as the distractor while the other leaned over a table and grabbed a laptop from a table. They hightailed it out of the store with the manager and others in pursuit. Witnesses called the police, gave them the license plate number and the police stopped the car on Route 50 as it headed back toward DC.
My MacBook was one of three stolen computers
