Christmas Fire

CHRISTMAS FIRE
by: Mary Westlie-Jones

I got off the phone with my daughter, Sheila, at about 7:00 p.m. that Saturday evening. She had been telling me that though there were “only two days!” until the official holiday, as all the advertising was telling us, she was definitely not feeling the spirit and her home had yet to begin to feel very much like Christmas. Her husband, Dennis, had lost his job just after Thanksgiving and she was trying really hard to partially make up for the difference in income by working as much overtime as she could in her job as a medical assistant.

One of the results of this was that when one of her kids, either 8-year old Jesse or 12-year old Lacey, would call her at work and inform her of something like, “Mom, I’m supposed to bring cookies tomorrow,” or made a just-before-bedtime exclamation of, “Oh no! I forgot that I have to bring a gift for Secret Santa tomorrow, Mom!” she would have to either stop on her way home or go back out to the store to pick these items up, which she was way too exhausted to do – but did anyway. The kids were a little disappointed that they were the ones to bring the store-bought cookies, because at most prior school events, their mom’s cookies -- brownies and such -- were always homemade, very fresh, and the best of the bunch.

She couldn’t attend most of the special holiday events with them at school, at Scouts, at church, or otherwise. She didn’t have the time or energy to participate in, much less instigate – like she usually did – their annual family traditions like Christmas caroling, gathering food or toys for less fortunate families, or the many and various craft projects that she always did with the kids. No popcorn Christmas trees, gingerbread houses, or oddly-shaped wreaths this year.

They had very few gifts under the tree, unlike former years, and they wouldn’t even have had a Christmas tree at all, except that Jesse started crying in the parking lot of the grocery store where the trees were being sold. When Sheila told him that they didn’t have the money to spare to buy one, one of the teen-aged clerks overheard the conversation and told her that the trees that were going to be discarded were at the back of the store, and that she could go pick one out and take it home. No lights had been placed outside on the house, or in the yard, because Dennis was either too busy out looking for a job, or simply too depressed and despondent to move. The only lights shining at all were those in the children’s eyes, hopeful as always – as children are – that someone or something will come along and put the spirit back into Christmas for their family.

After hearing Sheila relate all this to me I was not feeling all that festive, either. I would’ve liked to just hop in the car and take her out for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and try to cheer her up a bit, but I lived about an hour an a half away and with the pre-holiday traffic, it probably would’ve taken me three hours to get there and three to get back. So I tried to comfort her by phone. She, however, wasn’t buying my “feel good” speech about things getting better and everything working together for good. She said that she just wished that the holidays would pass quickly because she and Dennis were both exhausted, broke, and down-spirited. She said that if she had to look at a return of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” or hear the kids asking for the latest new video game that she couldn’t afford to buy them, she felt like she might just start weeping and never stop.

The last thing that she told me was that she and Dennis were about to go out – unwillingly – to the mandatory holiday party given by the owners of the medical clinic she worked at. She was sure, of course, that they would have a lousy time, would only stay for an hour or so, and that she would call me in the morning to talk about the specifics of what would be happening on Christmas Eve and day. Our family always gathered at my parents home for an early Christmas Eve potluck and gift exchange, and then we sort of regrouped the next day with our own immediate families – children, grandchildren, etc. My folks are in their 80’s now, so two or three hours of having about 40 or 50 people, about two thirds of them very excited and sugar-filled children, was enough for them, and they would spend the next day at home, usually with each branch of the family visiting separately for a few minutes just to say “Merry Christmas.”

We said "goodnight," I hung up the phone, exchanged my clothes for P.J.’s, and lay down in bed. The next thing I knew, I was jarred from sleep by the phone ringing and before I could finish saying “Hello,” I heard my granddaughter hysterically sobbing.

“Nana! Nana! Our house is on fire! It’s all gone, Nana! My mommy and daddy are at a party and I can’t get hold of them. It’s burning, Nana!”

Oh, God. Though it was difficult to hear all of the words she was saying, there was one thing I was sure of: I had heard the word fire.

“Where are you, Lacey?” was my first question. “Where is Jesse?”

“At home. Oh, Nana, I’m scared.”

“At home” didn’t exactly give me the information I was searching for. I was trying to determine if she was in or out of the house.

I said, “Lacey…are you outside?”

“Just a minute, Nana,” she says, still sobbing. Then, for a few seconds, it sounded like she was talking to somebody; I thought I heard a man’s voice. I prayed that it was a fireman. I waited for about ten or twenty seconds and then said, “Lacey? Lacey, are you there?”

No answer. The phone went dead. I tried calling her back, but there was no answer. I tried my daughter’s cell phone that she always has with her. No answer. I tried the “call back” service provided by the phone company -- *69 – but it didn’t work because Sheila had call blocking on her phone. I was frantic.

All I knew for sure (or at least what she had told me), was that their home was burning and that there was someone – a man, I thought – with Lacey. I didn’t know whether she and Jesse were out of the house, I didn’t know if she had been able to contact her mom and dad, I didn’t even know whether or not she had called 911 before she called me. I presumed so, but I didn’t know that to be fact.

So, at the same time that I was stumbling from my bed and grabbing the clothes that I had tossed into the laundry a couple of hours before, I called 911. Of course, the emergency dispatch operator was located in the city I lived in, and not the one my daughter lived in, so she was a bit confused at first, but she must’ve understood the urgency in my voice, and heard the words “fire,” and “children,” so she stayed with me.

I tried to get my legs into my pants, tripping, falling, and dropping the phone while hollering “Hold on! hold on! Don’t hang up!” When I dropped the phone, it had rolled under my bed. I was lying on the floor, tangled up like a pretzel with my legs halfway in and halfway out of my already inside out pants, trying to squeeze under the bed and make my arm reach the phone that I couldn’t see because I had been too excited and agitated to think straight and turn on the light. Finally, my hand comes into contact with hard plastic, and I’ve got the phone.

The operator asks me for the address where the fire is and I realize that I haven’t memorized my daughter’s address! I know how to get to her house by driving, but the only time I ever write her address is when I send a birthday card or something, and even that is not very often because they are usually handed to the recipient, along with a gift at a get-together.

I told her that I would have to go find my phone directory and she said, “No, that’ll take too long. Just give me their home phone number and I can bring up their address.” I did so, and she recited: “6322 El Portal, Sun City. I is that it?”

It was. Thank God for modern technology. She told me that she would send emergency personnel immediately to that address, but that it would take about ten minutes for them to get there. She wanted me to stay on the phone with her. We had a rather heated discussion, then.

I was trying to get her to tell me whether or not any firemen or paramedics are already “at the scene,” (I wanted to know who the man was that I had heard with my granddaughter), and might be able to tell her if my grandkids were okay. She told me that she couldn’t tell me that. What?? Why?

“I’m sorry, Ma’am, I can tell you only that I have dispatched them to the scene. I’m just not permitted to disclose any further information to you.”

“For God’s sake, lady! These are my grandkids and their parents are not home! I just want to know that they’re okay. Please, please, just tell me whether the firemen are already at their house. If they are, maybe you can talk to them and find out whether both the kids are out of the house and if they’re okay. Please?”

“I’m very sorry, Ma’am. I understand your frustration, but I really can’t give you that information. If you stay on the line with me, I can let you know when the unit arrives at the scene, but that’s all the information I can give you.”

Oh, man. I was about to lose it. Now I had an agonizing decision to make. Should I stay on the phone just to find out that the fire department had made its way to my daughter’s house – and receive no further information? Or, should I run to my car and speed out to their house as fast as I could?

I want to make sure that they got the help that they needed, but since the dispatcher wasn’t going to tell me anything further than whether the firemen had arrived at the house, it seemed that I might as well take off and get as much of a head start on the trip as I could. At this point, I was so scared, so frustratingly angry at the woman on the phone, and so agitated, that I had a hard time deciding anything.

I couldn’t believe that this woman, who probably had kids of her own, wouldn’t tell me anything about my grandkids. Where has humanity’s heart gone, I wondered.

After a moment or two of this indecision, I slammed the phone down, finished struggling into my clothes, grabbed my keys and purse, and got in the car. Then, I stopped moving. For only about thirty seconds or so, but I just stopped. I felt like I needed to ground myself, or I would wreck my car and hurt myself and thus, not be able to help anyone. So I spoke aloud these words: “Lord, please be with me as I drive to see my family . Keep me safe. Please send Sheila and Dennis home quickly and safely to their kids and keep the kids safe. And Lord, I know it’s a lot to ask, but please don’t let their house and all their stuff burn completely up.” I felt calmed and comforted – a little bit – and was able to drive to their house without being overcome by panic.

When I arrived at the entrance to their tract and made the left turn to enter their street, I saw about eight or nine fire trucks, a couple of ambulance/paramedic units, and a number of police cars – all with their multicolored lights flashing and their walkie-talkie type radios blaring. The police had barricaded the entrance to the street with their cars, so I abandoned my car at the side of the road, despite the patrol officer’s warning that “you can’t just leave your car there, lady! It will be towed away.”

Then tow it, buster. I’m coming in. I’m gonna go see my grandkids. I was pretty fed up with hearing about the things that I couldn’t do or about the things that the people who were supposedly paid with my tax money would not, or could not do for me. How about a little understanding here, fellas? A little empathy? What if it were your family? I’ll bet that you’d make damned sure that nobody stood in your way, right?

Well, so did I. Enough was enough.

I walked away from the police officer with him still hollering at me. As I got further down the street, the entirety of the surreal scene hit me. It felt like I was in the middle of some kind of a movie set. Amazingly bright spotlights and circling red and blue lights were everywhere. There were canvas hoses stretched across the street. Crowds of people were milling around or standing in little bunches on the sidewalk. As I walked further and further toward my daughter’s house, the wall of police and fire personnel I had to wade through became wider and more dense. By the time I actually got through them all, I must have sounded like I was chanting some kind of a Buddhist mantra… “I just need to see my grandkids…Lacey, Jesse!? Where are my grandkids? Excuse me. Pardon me. Get out of my way!” Looking back, I seem to remember people sort of moving aside for me – parting the way. I’d like to think that they all “got” why I was so frantic, but realistically speaking, I think they did it just because I had a crazed look in my eyes.

In any case, I made my way through the throng of people who were mesmerized by this bizarrely magnetizing scene. I was still trying to assimilate all that was going on and trying desperately to find my grandkids. All of a sudden, somebody bumped into me, practically knocking me off my feet. I was about ready to shove whoever it was out of my way, thinking that it was someone else wanting to prevent me from going closer to the house, but then, I heard, “Nana! Nana!”

It was Lacey, grasping me so tight that both of us were weaving and bobbing and having a hard time keeping our balance. Of course, we were both sobbing, and as I wiped tears off my face and soot and snot off hers, I asked, “Where’s Jesse, honey? Is he all right?”

“He’s over there with Sheba, Nana. And so are Mommy and Daddy.” Sheba is their 11-year old German Shepherd that is as much a part of their family as either of the kids are; I had forgotten about her. I called my daughter’s name and within about two seconds, all five of us were standing in the middle of the street crying together. At this point, these were – at least on my part – tears of joy, for I now knew that my family was intact and all of them were unharmed. Everyone was talking at once, me asking questions and them saying how glad they were that I was there and that they had been trying to get me on my cell phone. My cell phone was plugged into the wall at home, charging. I had realized that about fifteen minutes after I left my house, when I had tried to reach Sheila again on hers.

Up to that point, I had been so wrapped up in trying to locate a familiar face, that I hadn’t even taken notice of whether or not their home was still standing. Some of it was. The chimney. Part of the back of the house, the kitchen. The garage and the rest of the house looked like I imagined it might have looked had a bomb gone off inside it. What wasn’t ash, was charred and smoking. Wooden posts sticking out here and there.

There was a huge pile of their stuff heaped up in the next-door neighbor’s yard, what was left of it anyway. I don’t think I had ever seen anything sadder. There were parts of Lacey’s bed – the cute little white iron canopy that she had waited so long to get – half melted and completely ruined. Dennis and Jesse’s small little metal fishing boat had been dragged from the back yard and looked like one of those unrecognizable modern sculptures that you see in art galleries; one of the fishing poles was hanging over the side, bent into a question mark. The entertainment unit that held all their memories – their videos of special events and days, their photo albums, trophies, etc., was on it’s side with only a few of the warped, black video cassettes spilling out along with one or two of Jesse’s soccer trophies – twisted and distorted.

It was just awful. Devastating. Every two or three minutes one of the kids would blurt out something like: “Dad! Your guitar that grandpa gave you! or “Mommy, look! Your wedding pictures!” And Mom or Dad – my daughter and her husband – would put their arms around the kids and say, “It’s okay, honey…they don’t matter as long as we’re all okay.” It was really heartbreaking to see and hear this flood of realization come to the surface and see all those memories destroyed. But they were right. Although much of what was lost that night was irreplaceable, and though it was all terribly sad, they were unhurt and that was what really mattered.

So, as the firemen continued dragging various smoldering items from the mess that was their home, as my family watched their past being stepped on, thrown into a heap, and otherwise desecrated, and although I was very thankful that everyone was unhurt, I was still thinking about the uncivil servant of a dispatch lady. About the police officer who was yelling at me not to leave my car unattended. About the firemen who would not let me get close to the house, despite the fact that I told them that it was my daughter and her family’s house and that I didn’t even know if they were okay.

Right about then, two women and a few kids from the neighborhood came up to Sheila, holding two huge bags. They had already gone house-to-house on the block gathering clothing and blankets for my family.

A teenager walked up and gave me a box containing bottled water, fruit, snack food, and three cups of hot coffee. My daughter and I looked at each other and came really close to crying again, all the while saying “Thank you. Thank you very much.” to these people, virtual strangers actually, who wanted no thanks. They just wanted to help in whatever way they could.

As we were standing there, looking through the bags to see if we could find something warm for the kids to wear, as they were still in only their pajamas, an elderly widower who lived across the street from Sheila walked up to us. He told my daughter that he had just rented himself a room at one of the local hotels for a week and that he would feel blessed and honored if she and her family would, please, make themselves at home in his home until they figured out what they were going to do.

Sheila and Dennis politely declined, but then this gentleman – this gentle man – started crying himself and told us that when he was a young child, his home and all his family’s possessions had burned and what he remembered most vividly was the lonely and forlorn feeling of “homelessness” in the few days right after the fire. He begged them to please accept his offer, saying that he wanted more than anything for them to stay in his home. He explained that they would need to be nearby in the coming days to keep an eye on what remained of their belongings, and to deal with other issues that would arise – like insurance claims inspectors wanting to meet with them at the house.

By this time, it was about 2:30 in the morning and everyone was exhausted. My daughter was too tired to argue anymore and when my granddaughter started tugging on her mom’s jacket, begging, “Please, Mommy?” it was settled. The old man looked like someone had just given him the best gift of his lifetime as he handed the key to his home over to my son-in-law. We were all overwhelmed with his generosity and kindness and I had begun, just a little bit, to feel better about humankind and the state of its collective heart.

The firemen were wrapping up and the crowd of neighbors and other onlookers had pretty much disbursed when Sheila happened to look up toward the still-smoldering wreck of their home. She grabbed my arm as she began to weep openly and loudly. My heart skipped a beat as I instantly wondered what new tragedy she had seen or remembered. Not being able to speak, she pointed toward the far edge of their water-logged lawn.

As my eyes followed her finger, I also gasped. And I was at a complete loss for words – as she was – at what I saw.

Coming from what was once the living room of their home, and heading toward the place she was staring and pointing was a fireman. He was holding their sad, mostly-burned little "Charlie Brown" Christmas tree in one hand and struggling with his other hand, which held the few gifts that Sheila and Dennis had been able to purchase and which had been placed under the poor little charity-given tree. Still staring, with our mouths wide open because of the huge lumps in our throats, we followed his progress and we watched as he set them tenderly down on a blanket that another firefighter had spread on the neighbor’s lawn for that purpose. Just next to him stood another firefighter, a lady, who was holding the kids’ other pets (whom we had all forgotten about in the excitement and horror of everything that was going on): their goldfish, “Midas,” in one hand and their hamster, “Harry,” in the other.

That was it, boy. The floodgates all came open and all of us – my daughter, her husband, Lacey, Jess, me, several of the neighbors who were still nearby and even a couple of the firefighters – we all started crying and laughing at the same time. There was, of course, a little bit of comic relief in this sight, but even better than that was the sense that mankind hadn’t quite completely gone to hell after all.

“Now that,” said my daughter to her children, and anyone else who was listening, “is really what Christmas is all about, isn’t it Mom?”

Yes, honey. It is. It really is.