RantingWomen.com Women’s Blog

With my husband in the terminal stages of cancer, I’ve been forced to think about some strange things lately. One of them is my personal safety.

This started around midnight last night. I was just stepping into the bath tub when my doberman starting barking like crazy. Zeus is unlike our previous doberman, a pretty laid back fellow who almost forgets his duties as a watch dog, content to lay around and soak up the love, as only a rescue dog can. So… if Zeus was barking - someone must be in the house or very close to a window.

Never in my life would I have thought to throw on a robe and go check it out. After all, with five very large sons, a big husband and a dobie… why should I worry? Any attempt to get into our house would surely end in death and dismemberment for any intrudor. It has never crossed my mind. We live in a small town. I am not careful.

Last night, for the first time, I realized there was no one but me to respond to the warning of the barking dog. My husband is too weak to hold his glass of orange juice. My big sons have all grown up and moved away. My youngest son and daughter, the only two left at home, are sleeping peacefully at the back of the house - unarmed. My ferocious doberman is… well, less than ferocious.

I flung open the chemical cabinet in the bathroom, frantic for a weapon. Ah… wasp spray. A nice twenty-foot stream of blinding poison in my hand. I fling on the robe, crack the bathroom door and enter the dark bedroom. Zeus is quiet, but standing on the bed, at attention.

“It’s okay, boy,” I tell him. Sure it is. I have the wasp spray. I am mentally re-checking whether I locked the back door. Sometimes I don’t…

I reach the hallway and grab a heavy silver candlestick from the fireplace mantle. Stupid safety-conscious me… I’ve locked the guns away in the gun cabinet, and the keys are in my purse - at the back of the house. Damn.

It turns out, some cats are fighting at the corner of the front porch. My heart is pounding, and now I don’t feel like taking a bath, naked and unprotected in the house, which is suddenly large, creaky and ominous.

I can’t shake this now. Tonight I take Deb to karate and realize that our motorhome is parked at the “street side” of the driveway. You can’t see our cars or the back entrance to the house, its bulk hiding all that from the main road. I take a deep breath before I go into the house. My finger is, for the first time ever, on the panic button of the car remote. I wonder if it works…?

It is obvious this cannot continue. I refuse to live in fear, yet I know for the first time the demons that drove my single mom, keeper of two little girls, to put burglar bars on our windows, lock the doors even when we were home, and park in the most outlandish places at night - simply because the well-lighted areas aren’t always convenient. I get it now.

I’m making a plan. Tonight when I go to bed, I will unlock the gun cabinet, place the loaded .357 on my night stand, and I will keep the wasp spray within range as well. One shot of wasp spray, one speedy bullet. I do know how to shoot the gun. We’ve target-practiced at the range many times, and I was proud of my bulls-eye skills, just for bragging rights. Now, I find it gives me confidence that I can protect the family, as I now must.

Second, I’m going to Lowe’s to get some motion-detecting bright lights for all the shady areas around the house. I’m going to get a surveillance system for my computer, too. Then I can keep the laptop next to the bed and watch anything that moves around the house.

Paranoid? I guess I am a little bit.

I haven’t thought of being a woman alone before. First I was protected by my paranoid lone woman mother. The brief time I spent in my own apartment alone, I gave it no thought. When I was twenty, I was untouchable, protected by an army of guardian angels, naive assumptions and an attack cat. Then there were always men… and now there’s only me - solely responsible for my family’s safety.

Good thing the state of Louisiana has two great laws: one, if someone even touches your car while you are in it, you can shoot them - no questions asked. This was prompted by so many car-jackings in New Orleans, and has been tested time and again in court. Second, if someone is in your house, you can shoot them, no questions asked. Believe me, I will do it. Anyone in my house has no good intentions, and I won’t even allow myself to consider WHY they are in the house. I will shoot, and that’s it.

Having never considered any of this before, I am doing some careful analysis of my habits. I’ll be going, with my sixteen-year-old daughter, to self defense classes, and I will probably buy her a gun as well. I will take her to the range and teach her calm and accuracy. Hopefully, as she is a month away from her black belt in karate, she has learned calm thinking under attack. We will practice, and my son Daniel, although he will probably move out in a year or so, will be involved for the time that he still lives at home.

We can do this. Women have to consider safety, even if they are happily married with an army of sons. The day will come when we each need to take responsibility for our own safety, and planning starts now. Never assume there will always be someone there to take care of you…

Anne Pierson, Editor

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