Growing Up Without Fear

It's a grey day outside. I'm wearing blue Gator sweatpants and an orange Gators T-shirt. It's 50 degrees here in Boulder, but is snowing like mad at Vail and along the Continental Divide. It's nice to watch the snow fall on the camera view and be warm at home. I've got the back door open about 6 inches, and Nedi is chasing the ravens and squirrels out in the back yard. He runs back inside with his eyes hugely dilated and fluffed up and dives under the bed - sometimes the ravens stop at the patio, and sometimes they fly in and back out... They know me, and that I won't harm them. The squirrels are also used to my cats chasing them; they will run away for a while, but then they turn and charge back at the cats. The cats promptly put on their brakes, and they have a staring contest. Then the kits usually turn their attention elsewhere and ignore the squirrels for a spell. Lovey went out for a while this morning, then came back in and sneezed all over me. After sitting on my shoulder for 5 minutes, she's gone over to the reading chair, and is curled up there.

   I guess I read too many mystery books; after Jessica Ridgeway had been missing for 48 hours, I had small hope she'd be found alive and well, and after 72 hours I thought she was dead. The poor little girl. Someone with hopes, dreams and her own unique ideas is lost to our society. I hope her abductor is caught soon, and I hope the state manages to get an air-tight case against this monster.

   I was a lucky child - I had loving and caring parents, and I grew up at a time when the atrocities committed against kids today were extremely rare. I cannot remember being afraid, or "being on watch", at any time as a child. (We did live a mile away from a prison where the trustees did road work for the county, and I think I recall two times when there was an "escape" and we were told to lock our doors...) I remember wandering far and alone when I was 4 and living in Texas - walking out of the sight of our subdivision and following irrigation ditches through fields of grain that had grown taller than my head. And I was never afraid wandering around on Chincoteague or Assateague Islands, either. Once I was 14, and I knew about sex, I was more careful - but I still felt safe. I guess I was a tremendously lucky kid.