Who Would Do Something Like That?

Or maybe the better question is why?

We were awoken Saturday morning a little before three a.m. to the sound of shattering glass. Well, I should say that my Mom and Grandma were awoken. My room is the converted garage on the other side of the house which is pretty well insulated so I didn't hear anything until my Mom came in my room to get the step stool. Someone had hurled two rocks through the brand new windows my mom just had replaced in April. After living with a broken window for longer than I can remember, my mom decided to have it replaced. No one knows how or when the window got broken but it had a huge crack in it since long before my dad died and that was almost nine years ago. But it had that window tint film on it so it never shattered so it just got left there. It was my parents bedroom and since my dad had worked the night shift a lot, the windows had thick pads between the window and the curtain to keep light out, and the window never got used as a window so I guess no one ever cared enough to replace it.

But my mom has been wanting to fix up her house (she put it on hold while she was battling cancer and confided to me that now that she has been in remission for nearly five years she guessed she wasn't going to die anytime soon so she's finally ready to work on the house) and the first thing she did was replace the broken window. But due to the tint on the non-broken window, she really had to replace both front windows. So she found a glazier and had the windows replaced. (She has since painted the house and put rock in the front yard. See here for the before and after)

I joked that the neighbors were going to think that we were being uppity for fixing up the house. We live in an older neighborhood (our house has been in our family for generations, bought by my grandparents when it was new over forty-five years ago. That may not seem all that old, but trust me, in Las Vegas it's ancient) I said we should leave the broken window so people don't think we have very much (and since we don't, we'd be right). But I didn't honestly think someone would smash the new windows.

Seriously, who does something like that? First of all, one of the rocks they threw was big and heavy and could have killed my grandmother if it had hit her. Fortunately it didn't but they don't know who or what is behind that curtain. Glass went everywhere, on the floor, on her bed, in her shoes. Thank goodness my mom got in to her room in time to keep my grandma from getting out of bed and cutting herself. It took forever to get most of the glass up. We will be finding tiny shards for months, I'm sure. Secondly, why would you pick my mom's house? She has never done anything to anyone. Ever. She's such a good person who has had to deal with a whole lot of awful in her life. It takes a really ugly person to pick on the 4'9" older cancer surviving widow, let me tell you. If I ever found out who did it, I don't think I can be held accountable for my actions.

Look, we'll fix the windows. But you can't fix my mom's fear that it will happen again. You can't fix her disappointment that her lovely house is forever marred by this incident. You can't fix her distrust of the neighborhood she has lived in for more than thirty years. My mother, the saint, feel that there will be a karmic punishment for whoever did this. I, on the other had, would welcome a public stoning. (That's why she's a saint and I am forever trying to be more like her.) I'm glad she isn't more angry. But I wish I could do something to make her less afraid.