This weekend husband and I were talking with Eliot around the dining room table where all the best conversations tend to blossom. On Saturday night Eliot asked about why some people break up and then he named all the kids he knows with separated or divorced parents. I then asked him to name all the families he could think of who are still together. We talked about who Grammy used to be married to when my husband was born and Eliot’s face was hilarious. He couldn’t believe the pairings of 30 plus years ago. So after we blew his mind on that topic husband started reading a chapter from Charlotte’s Web to him. I don’t know what came over me but I decided to share with him that when I was in grade 11 science we had to dissect a fetal pig. I may have written about this years ago but the short story is I refused to do it so I was assigned to have a lab partner who would do the hands on work and I would write about everything she did and found. So, of course I named the baby Wilbur and wrote about him in detail and his lost life. Eliot was a little puzzled as to how they got this baby pig (unborn) from it’s mother. He just stared at me and said, “I would have liked to hug it before it died.”

A human being and his cigarette caused this:

Stay with me. I’m loopy-tired and had a large glass of red wine. It’s Thursday night February 23, 2012 and I need to write about what happened last night.

Husband and I were talking on the couch and all I wanted to do was go to sleep. We heard a large crash and then pops (this is hard to recall now but it was very loud and unusual). We looked out the front windows- nothing. Looked out the back windows and saw sparks/flickering light. I said to husband something about fireworks and stupid… Well H opened our back door and realized it was a fire, the house behind us was ablaze. We immediately assigned ourselves tasks, H go get Eliot and I grabbed the phone to call 911 (I yelled to H to make sure E had his blanket, we’ve never been without E’s blanket and if this was it and we were about to loose everything I wanted our son to have his baby blanket). I put on my rubberboots and we dashed out the door. I was in the middle of the street yelling into my phone “9-1-1” because you have to say it after the beep! UGH! I was scared and the flames were getting higher and higher faster than I can tell you. I didn’t know who was still in their homes in our cozy cluster of old houses but even in the mayhem I knew it wasn’t windy, I knew it was wet and I hoped the fire wouldn’t jump. There were so many people in the street. Someone yelled to me that 911 was already called. I stayed on the phone anyway, talked with the dispatcher (or yelled, rather that they needed to hurry up). H & E were standing in the street glowing orange and I again, probably yelling told them to move. At the same time a woman came by telling H to get away from the power lines. I looked at H and said, we need the car. I didn’t know how long this was going to last, we were outside, it was cold and we were frightened. I ran in. Grabbed keys. Got the car out. Pulling to the curb as the fire trucks finally arrived. Six minutes felt like 60 minutes. We shivered with fear in the car watching the flames and smoke rise. E kept asking if our house was on fire. I said I don’t know and I don’t think so over and over again. We called loved ones, they called us, H tweeted and facebooked as he trembled. It took about 10 minutes for the fireman to control and 45 minutes until it was completely out. We asked a couple different officers if we could cross the police tape and enter our house again. They finally said yes. We went in. We are grateful. Half the house had a power outage. E and I snuggled up in his bed. He said, “Mommy, I’m feeling all kinds of different things at once. Sad, tired, nervous, happy, scared.” I said, me too. He was soon asleep. I checked on H. Cleaned myself up. Stared at the fire trucks out the front window. I hate bright lights but hours had gone by and now I could just stare and watch the blue and red bleed into purple. I went to bed. So tired, unable to sleep. I just let myself rest with my eyes closed. I heard the trucks leave. H came to bed. I fell deeply asleep.

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I hate cigarettes even more now. And I already REALLY hated them.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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