Bailey Blog

One morning, before my dad had passed and I was staying at my mother’s house with my sister, I was laughing and showing my sister Tik Toks before my mom rushed into the room and put my cashed work check on the bed in front of us.

I was deeply confused and she wasn’t forthright with her story, but it came about that my car doors were opened and on her morning walk, my mom had found my things flying about the streets and my car ransacked. I bolted outside to investigate my car. Thank the gods my wallet wasn’t found in a hidden compartment in my car. But my purse (which was hidden from view) that contained my laptop and priceless notebook of entries from years past were missing. Other miscellaneous items which I would recall later were gone as well, but of much less consequence than the computer and notebook.

My sister and I walked up and down the neighborhood in the patterns that my items had been scattered; asking neighbors with doorbell cameras along the way for footage. Either the cameras were for show, or no useful footage was found. As our father was on the brink of transitioning to death, this moment was least opportune for my mental fortitude to prevail. I began to have a panic attack and was quietly weepy for most of the walk home. So much so, that I asked if we could walk another block over on the street behind our house to calm my body down.

Through the tears and my sister calming me with advice of how to replace my lost documents and getting money for a new laptop, I saw a young boy, maybe seventeen years old, hop the fence from his own backyard into the street and stared at us oddly before hurrying down the road. I noticed he had on a backpack and pulled on his hood before walking off. I studied the home he had left and noticed it was far more dilapidated than any other house on the street. Its overgrown, gnarled trees and shrubs dying and choking the chipped paint on the house it entangled. I cannot say I got a feeling in my gut or a zing of understanding. I just knew. It was him.

I stopped crying and told my sister; I wanted to double-back and scour the house for any signs of my stolen goods. She was adamant it was a bad idea and dangerous, so we retreated to our mother’s house once again to game-plan.

It was at this moment that I realized I had left my AirPods in my purse as well. I couldn’t track my computer because it was no longer connected to wifi, but the AirPods indicated they were … exactly where the boy had walked off to.

My sister and I loaded into the car and took off to follow the signal. Yet, once we approached the location, it jumped back into our neighborhood and back toward the house we saw the boy come from-just in the next-door neighbor’s backyard. My inner-knowing confirmed, I enlisted my mother’s partner to accompany me to the door of the neighbor’s home to enquire about the AirPods signal and left my sister at home.

The woman who answered the door explained that this was not the first time this had happened and many people had their phone and headphones direct them to her home. She let us search through her trash and look in the backyard but we could tell it was a dead end. I then knew the solution to be checking the unkempt home.

We were greeted with booming barks and a very tall, burly woman answered the door. I had barely began to explain the situation and she bombed past us and to one of the trucks parked in the driveway. She pulled back a tarp covering the back of the truck which gave way to nigh on thirty plastic bags filled with random allotments of items. She grabbed one in particular and pulled out my computer.

I was thrilled and grateful beyond my expressions to her, but she didn’t stop there. Between checking trash cans, bushes, and piles of leaves in the gutter, she explained how her son was mentally ill and refused to take his medications. They had gotten in physical altercations the night before and he left to wander the streets. He had just come back from an institution and not transitioned well home. He was only fourteen.

Just then, he jumped from their backyard once more and took off running down the street; his mother shouting after him. But it made no difference to his cadence. We found nothing else of my belongings but exchanged phone numbers with his mother for any possible updates as she continued her search.

Right after we noticed the robbery in the early morning, I had phoned the police and they said they would send their non-emergency personelle when they were able. When we arrived back at my mom’s home, the police were waiting out front. We explained what happened to them and they were surprised we got anything back at all. I was not interested in pressing charges but gave them the full run-down of the story.

The mother had explained to us that her son steals regularly; checking car doors and house doors to see if he can get in and find “trading cards for the government”. He was under the delusion that AirPods and electronics in particular are useful to trade with government officials for information about aliens and the like. Our inquiry was not the first but she doesn’t have the resources to stop him.

A week or so went by with no word from the mother about any more of my items. Until one morning, I received a call from the Police Department. They had my AirPods and asked when I could pick them up. When I returned the call, I learned that there were upwards of thirty robbery cases brought against this youth from over the past two and a half years. And those folks were interested in pressing charges. The police performed a complete raid on the home due to my confirmation of stolen and retrieved items; and they found a multitude stolen electronics in the home.

I surmise my purse was thrown away, as was my irreplaceable journal with years of musings, memories, and entries of time with my dad. Conversations of his process through dealing with cancer and his hopes for our family in the future. Although I got my laptop back, I would have traded it in an instant for that invaluable piece of my history.

I returned to the hospital later and regaled my dad with the story of the day. From his bed, he held my hand and looked at me with awe and pride. He told me how strong my intuition has always been and he has loved to watch me follow it through the years. My combination of intuitive notion and motivation to follow the knowing was something he wanted me to follow always.

My strong intuition has always been innate to me and it is important to nourish it, along with my other inherent abilities. “Your magic” as my dad called it. Now that he’s gone and not around to encourage me, I like to use my magic to guide me as he would. Stand up for myself always and do what’s best for me even when it’s hard and maybe even dangerous. In the moments that matter, it has never directed me down the wrong path.