Danger Danger

Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.

~William Shakespeare

For many years, my dreams and premonitions ended with positive or miraculous results. I didn’t have an unhappy ending until the first week of November 2009, when I woke up from a dream in which a large log, about ten-feet long and two-feet in diameter, rammed the front door of my house. As I got ready for work that morning, I dismissed the unsettling dream. It was probably just something I remembered from a movie or book about armies ramming the gates of castles to get in.

A week later, I dreamed a second time about the log ramming the front door. I wondered what it meant, but work and the upcoming holidays kept me too busy to spend much time thinking about it. It wasn’t until I had the same dream a third and fourth time that I guessed something big must be coming into my life.

After the long Thanksgiving weekend, I took the first Wednesday in December off from work to thoroughly clean the house and put up Christmas decorations. It turned out to be a relaxing and productive day with no interruptions. As I finished a late lunch, the buzzer on the dryer let me know that the last load of laundry was done. Placing my husband’s shirts and my blouses on hangers, I folded the remaining items and took everything to the bedroom to put away. Walking into the closet, my inner voice unexpectedly said, “You should take all your jewelry and put it in a box in the back of your car.”

Shocked by this unusual suggestion, I looked over at my necklaces hanging on multiple hooks and my four-drawer wooden chest containing bracelets, earrings, and a few rings. None of it was really expensive except a pair of diamond earrings and a matching pendant that my husband had given me on our anniversary. But all of it was unique and special to me. One of my favorites was a silver, gold, and bronze heart-shaped locket that my daughter had given me on Mother’s Day. The word “Mother” was written in gold script across the front of it and on the inside was a picture of her and my granddaughter. As I touched each necklace, I recalled when and where I bought it or who had given it to me.

Trusting my premonition, I went and retrieved one of the empty storage containers that had held some decorations. Carefully, I put the necklaces and the wooden chest in it. As I carried it to the garage and put it in the back of my station wagon under a gray vinyl cover, my sensible mind silently countered, “A car sitting in a public parking lot is not safer than your locked house.”

Feeling a little foolish, I had to agree with the logic that a locked house is safer than a car and half-heartedly carried the container back to the closet. Not quite sure why I was debating the safety of my jewelry, I decided to wear my diamond earrings and pendant for the next week or so. They would definitely be secure that way. Confident that I had satisfied both suggestions, I turned off the closet light and got busy finishing a few more projects before the day was over.

The next day, I was busy nonstop at work. In order to complete an important report, I skipped lunch and stayed at my desk. However, my efforts were frequently interrupted because the telephone kept ringing. A few times, the caller hung up, which was unusual. It was around quitting time that my daughter called and said, “Mom, the police are on their way to your house.”

Since she lived two blocks from me, my granddaughter had decided to go to my house to do her homework on my new laptop. As she went to put the key in the lock, the door swung open, and she could see our flat-screen TV was missing. She knew immediately that we had been burglarized. As she ran up the street to a girlfriend’s house, she called her mother on her cell phone. My daughter then called the police.

Upon arriving home, I saw two patrol cars in front of our house and two policemen taking pictures of footprints in the snow. Some of our neighbors were standing on the sidewalk wanting to know what happened. One of the officers asked my husband and me to walk with him through each room, the basement, and garage in order to make a list of the items stolen. The burglars had taken our large flat-screen TV and two smaller ones, a video camera, two laptops, a color printer, and two suitcases. In order to help the police find our items, I got out the file folders with receipts, manufacturers, and serial numbers. They were going to fax the list of stolen items with this information to all the surrounding city and county police departments and pawnshops.

The only irreplaceable items, which also happened to be the least expensive, were my jewelry. In disbelief, I asked the police several times, “Why would anyone steal jewelry that is not worth hundreds or thousands of dollars? It can’t be sold or pawned.”

They didn’t have an answer. I felt extremely violated that strangers had been walking around in our home ransacking every room and closet and emptying the contents of every drawer and shelf onto the floor. Our next-door neighbor came over and told us she had seen a white van backed into our garage and figured we were having some work done in the house. Wondering how they had closed the garage door when they left, we discovered a garage wall remote had been taken, too.

Now I know the four dreams and the premonition in the past month had been a warning. To me, it is amazing that occasionally my intuition is capable of knowing in advance when something is going to happen. Fortunately, I have my anniversary diamond earrings and pendant to prove it does.

— Brenda Cathcart-Kloke —