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Aug. 8th, 2003 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
philrancidI've just gotten a reminder of how fragile our lives really are, how terrifyingly malleable.
We went to drop off the Tiger's NCLEX loan application, me and the kids, and when we returned there was a huge fire engine sitting out in the middle of our little street, and a couple of fire cars, and a police car and a host of civilian vehicles. Drawing closer, I saw that the neighbors across the street--directly across the street, their front door no more than twenty yards from our back door--had suffered a housefire. Their living room is ash. Fortunately there was no one injured, but it looks, from the extent of the damage caused before the fire was put out, like they've lost most of their possessions.
Granted, it's only things, but, think about the fact that these are their personal belongings, locked safely up and tidied away every evening. Gone now is their sense of home.
I want to rush over their, pitch in a hand, help them get their clothes out, what they can of their personal effects, but the kids are here, needed looking after, and what's worse, is that I have let our house become a sty.
I've done what I can think of doing, offered to let them use some heavy extension cords, if they can talk the people beside them into borrowing some power, I've offered to let them borrow umbrellas for when it was raining, duffel bags for the clothes and such, but I really don't have all that much, when what they need most, now, I would suppose, is a sense of home, and normalcy. It is my most fervent wish that their keepsakes, childhood photos, and the like, survived the fire.
I feel small, thinking all these thoughts I've thought lately, about how hot it is, how damnably muggy, how I wished that the car wasn't trying to overheat all the time so we could use the AC. How I've sat around wishing and dreaming and bullshitting my life away, when, one wrong blink of an eye, and everything can be destroyed.
On the one hand, I feel like I should just dive into everything headlong, as though I am granted not another day on this Earth, but the coward in me also fears such thoughts, and does what it can to rationalize them away.
I told the lady who lived there that she can borrow our fans, for if it gets too hot before they have finished salvaging, and I'll leave them in the laundry room.
They've boarded up the gaping charred hole that was their living room window, and they're going to wherever it is that they're going to stay for the night.
I hate like hell being this socially inept, feeling this awkward, this confused at the right thing to do. If they need help moving anything large, that is salvageable, I'll make sure they get it done. I wish I had a lot of money--for even though the man of the house works at the hospital Tiger does, and probably makes good money, now is the time when expenses compile themselves into a hellish beast, that can't be gotten over.
Here is sit, with all this crap, that some of it I don't even use, and a couple of yards away, through no fault of their own, my neighbors have had their home taken from them.
We went to drop off the Tiger's NCLEX loan application, me and the kids, and when we returned there was a huge fire engine sitting out in the middle of our little street, and a couple of fire cars, and a police car and a host of civilian vehicles. Drawing closer, I saw that the neighbors across the street--directly across the street, their front door no more than twenty yards from our back door--had suffered a housefire. Their living room is ash. Fortunately there was no one injured, but it looks, from the extent of the damage caused before the fire was put out, like they've lost most of their possessions.
Granted, it's only things, but, think about the fact that these are their personal belongings, locked safely up and tidied away every evening. Gone now is their sense of home.
I want to rush over their, pitch in a hand, help them get their clothes out, what they can of their personal effects, but the kids are here, needed looking after, and what's worse, is that I have let our house become a sty.
I've done what I can think of doing, offered to let them use some heavy extension cords, if they can talk the people beside them into borrowing some power, I've offered to let them borrow umbrellas for when it was raining, duffel bags for the clothes and such, but I really don't have all that much, when what they need most, now, I would suppose, is a sense of home, and normalcy. It is my most fervent wish that their keepsakes, childhood photos, and the like, survived the fire.
I feel small, thinking all these thoughts I've thought lately, about how hot it is, how damnably muggy, how I wished that the car wasn't trying to overheat all the time so we could use the AC. How I've sat around wishing and dreaming and bullshitting my life away, when, one wrong blink of an eye, and everything can be destroyed.
On the one hand, I feel like I should just dive into everything headlong, as though I am granted not another day on this Earth, but the coward in me also fears such thoughts, and does what it can to rationalize them away.
I told the lady who lived there that she can borrow our fans, for if it gets too hot before they have finished salvaging, and I'll leave them in the laundry room.
They've boarded up the gaping charred hole that was their living room window, and they're going to wherever it is that they're going to stay for the night.
I hate like hell being this socially inept, feeling this awkward, this confused at the right thing to do. If they need help moving anything large, that is salvageable, I'll make sure they get it done. I wish I had a lot of money--for even though the man of the house works at the hospital Tiger does, and probably makes good money, now is the time when expenses compile themselves into a hellish beast, that can't be gotten over.
Here is sit, with all this crap, that some of it I don't even use, and a couple of yards away, through no fault of their own, my neighbors have had their home taken from them.
