Seriously?

So, someone threw a rock through our window last night.  Around midnight.  Todd and I woke up to a crash and thought the cats had knocked over something enormous.  Nope.  It took us a groggy thirty seconds to understand that the piles of glass all over our living room started near a moving curtain and ended at a softball-sized rock that marked our wall and scraped our floor before it thudded to a stop.  And later, we realized that the window was only half of it.  The other, more frightening half was the frame of our front door, which had been slammed out of place.  Whether we were random targets or not, someone wanted to scare us, and it worked.  I was terrified, trembling, nauseated, dry-mouthed, and wide-eyed for the next hour and then restless and nervous for the rest of the night.

The police responded quickly, Marley and Rudy mercifully slept through it all, and I got about two hours of anxious rest before the sky lightened.  Todd and I spent hours vaccuuming up every last bit of glass this morning.  I used the hose attachment to make sure Marley's things in the shelves her father made her were shard-free.  Her books, her puzzles, her games.  I was furious and heartbroken cleaning up Candy Land, because it was physical evidence that two sweet, smart, precious little girls live in this house: they, especially, did not deserve this.

In the morning, I told Marley the story Todd, my sister Danielle, and I agreed on last night.  We didn't want to involve any hurt people or animals, so it went something like, "It was so windy last night that a big branch broke our window!  Can you believe it?"  She rolled her eyes and said matter-of-factly that we'd have to get some new glass.  I brought her and Rudy to her cousin's so that we could clean up.  And I felt so relieved that she was still innocent of the horrible, cruel, and stupid people who live in the world with her.

There are other things I want to say about last night.  What it makes me appreciate and what it makes me worry about.  What good and bad it says about my town and the people who live here, and what it makes me recognize in myself and history as far as fear and hatred and ignorance.  But it's hard for me to get into those things without over-explaining perspective, and I would like to try and sleep soundly this afternoon, so I'll settle for this somewhat (understandably?) melodramatic summary:

There are true, terrifying assholes in the world.

I don't know how they got that way.

Because they are failures somehow?  Because they are sick somehow?

I am glad I am not one of them.

I am thankful I do not live in constant fear of them.

(something that connects to...)

I love my Marley and Rudy.