A Burning Memory

Last evening after putting the finishing touches on my blog, which I posted at five-ish, know what I did? I went to bed. I went to sleep. I do this two or three times a year: I get so tired, and so tired of being tired, that I simply shut down. Does this happen to anyone else? I climb under the covers long before my normal bedtime and within moments I've fallen into a deep sleep, usually waking after seven or eight hours to get a drink of water and walk around the house a little bit, realizing that my family lived an entire evening without me and took themselves off to bed and have been asleep for ages without my even being aware of it. Then I go back to bed and sleep for several more hours, and get up the next morning at my normal time. It's a weird thing to do, I know, but I can't help it. I've never had much stamina and at this time of year I seem to have even less. It doesn't help that for weeks there's been no discernible routine and there's too much sugar on hand to eat, and as I've said on more than one recent occasion, certain memories have a tendency to haunt at Christmas.

I figure you'll all be glad when I cease to belabor this subject, this dead horse that I seem intent on beating long after the dirges have been sung over his lifeless body. I'm sorry! Blame it on all the sugar! But before the new year officially begins and I can put all these sad thoughts away -- just as the ornaments and lights and greenery that now festoon my house will soon be relegated to eleven months of dusty forgotten repose in the dark attic -- I feel the need to process a straggling Christmas memory or two. The first one involves something that happened on December 23rd, 2005.

A couple of months before the date in question, we had moved out of our house and into a larger house we'd purchased about ten miles away. We were ecstatic with the new place, which provided much more room for when the family gathered, as it was preparing to gather on December 23rd ... for obvious reasons. It was Christmas! On that particular day our eldest daughter, Stephanie, and her family were en route to South Carolina from Pennsylvania, where they lived at the time. Our youngest daughter, Erica, was running errands and finishing up a job with her dad. Andrew was at work. Middle daughter Audrey was with me ... we had been out buying last-minute gifts and food to prepare our festive holiday menus for the week.

The weather was mild and, much like this year, our entire state was in the throes of a drought. There had not been any measurable rain for months, and everywhere the grass was dry and brown. Our house had been put up for sale "By Owner" and we had found a solid buyer. His loan had been secured and closing was set to take place on December 30th, one week hence. The house sat empty, poised at the end of a cul-de-sac in a semi-rural area, looking lonely with dark windows and no cars in the driveway, no comings and goings, no Christmas decorations. We were so glad that in seven days, the sale would be final and we'd be out from under that uneasy feeling of having to meet mortgage payments on two houses! Then the phone call came.

Audrey and I had just arrived home (from Wal-Mart, no doubt) and were hauling groceries into the house. In fact, I was on the steps in the garage, about to open the door to the kitchen, when my cell phone rang. It was Becky, our neighbor who lived next door to the vacant house that was about to be sold. I'll never forget what she said immediately after identifying herself to me: "Jennifer, your house is on fire and it looks pretty bad. I've called the fire department and they're on their way." I thanked her and, fighting an overwhelming urge to black out, called my husband. I had to say it a few times before he understood that I meant our old house, not our new one, was on fire. He and Erica rushed over to the house. Since bad news has a dreadful tendency to travel very fast, Andrew had heard and was there shortly as well. The firemen were deftly handling the blaze, which had already done substantial damage.

Within twenty minutes of their arrival on the scene, the fire investigators had canvassed the neighborhood and knew how the blaze had started. They approached my husband and handed him a sheet of paper with several names written on it. They asked if he recognized any of the names, which he didn't. As it turned out, three boys -- ages 10, 9, and 6 -- had been playing on our street (they lived a few streets over) and apparently got bored. One of them remembered he had some fireworks, so the boys went to his house and dug them out. The grandfather of one of the boys supplied them with matches. For a reason I'll never understand (it was the middle of the day), the boys decided to light the fireworks and play with them in the street directly in front of our house. When the dry grass caught fire and the flames steadily worked toward the house, the boys ran away. They told no one what they had done. If our neighbor, Becky, had not been home and seen the flames, the house would likely have burned to the ground.

To make a long story short, only about half of the house was destroyed. Absurdly, it took an entire year for the insurance company's contractors to repair the damage (and we were forced to hector them about it for most of that time). Luckily Allstate made the mortgage payments on the house during that year, and our buyer (bless him) hung in there. He made other living arrangements in the interim, and just before Christmas last year we closed on the sale of the house that he and his family now call home.

Still amazing to me is the fact that not one of the children, or any of their parents for that matter, have ever attempted to contact us in any way to apologize for the havoc wrought in our lives by their actions. I guess they were waiting to see if we'd sue, but we never even considered doing that. After the statute of limitations had run and the guilty parties were not served with suit papers, I would have thought they'd at least want their children to look at us and say "I'm sorry." That would have been nice. I never looked at the paper provided to my husband by the fire investigator, and I have no idea who any of them were. I don't want to know.

I've thought so many times of how awful that time was, but whenever I do, I am thankful that it was no worse. The house was empty; no one was hurt. Of all the houses on our street, I was glad the boys picked ours to play with fire in front of, because if they had chosen any other house, there would have been much greater loss of personal property and perhaps even of life. It was bad, but not as bad as it could have been. Still, it was heartbreaking. And, like an ache or a pain that's barely noticeable during the day but which plagues you in the night reaches, at this time of year I tend to get that same queasy feeling that I got when I first heard the bad news. Thanks be to God, it's in the past. I think I'll forget about it now ... and next year if I feel the smoke in my eyes again, perhaps it won't sting as much.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about Melanie.

Comments

[Deppfest]

I'm beginning to get why you have these feelings at this time of year, Jen. A dreadful thing to have happen, and yes, the children should have been made to apologise if only to be aware of just how devastating their actions were/could have been.

Put it behind you now - you've moved on and don't need to dwell on the bad luck that caused so much chaos.

Kudos to the buyer who hung in - many would have taken the fire as an omen and called the sale off. I hope they are happy in your old home.

[Jenny]

Yes, they are a very nice family. All's well that ends well!