Alison Hodgson

Expert on the etiquette of perilous times.

Archives for February 2012

My Friend’s House Burned Down! What Should I Do?

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photo: Sandi Gunnett

I just heard that friends, a family of ten,  had a house fire yesterday and lost all their possessions. I don’t know the details but I do know they were home and thankfully everyone made it out safely.

A year and a half ago our family went through the same thing and I learned so much through the extraordinary support of our amazing community.

I offered to make a list of some things that were very helpful to us after our house fire to give some guidance to people who want to help but don’t know what to do. If your heart is hurting for this family I have some suggestions for how to express your care and concern:



1. Send money. This is quite simply the most helpful thing you can do. No amount is too small. Don’t worry about a card or writing something eloquent. Fill out a check and send it.

2. Send a gift certificate to stores like Meijer, Target or Walmart. The family will be able to buy groceries, clothes and many home items. Again, don’t worry about the amount. Every little bit helps.

3. Give clothes or home items. Be really thoughtful here. In this family everyone is under 40, if you are 85 and thinking about  donating your sweet cruise wear from 1987, just don’t. They’ve already been through enough!

4. Buy groceries or make food.  Once the family is settled in a new house buy them groceries or bring them meals. Make a big casserole in a 9×13 and leave the pan as a gift or use disposable containers.

5. Write a card/email/facebook post. Keep it brief. “I’m so sorry. I’m thinking about/praying for you”  doesn’t seem like much but it really is more than enough.

6. Spread the word. Tell business owners and anyone you know. You will be amazed how many donations are given.

7. Pray. I know it wasn’t very spiritual of me to put this last, but if you are a person who prays, you started as soon as you heard the news. Keep it up.

We were astonished and humbled by the extraordinary generosity of our community. It was a beautiful and bright light shining in the darkness.

Valentine’s Day

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I don’t remember much about Valentine’s Day last year.  In general it was a stressful time. The house was going up but insurance was dragging its heels to pay out a portion of the settlement that had been long negotiated. This meant the builders weren’t being paid which was so anxiety inducing for Paul and me. We had jumped through so many hoops to get the wreckage torn down, then even more to get the plans for the new house approved and now we were getting to make a thousand calls just to get money that was ours and should have been paid out weeks before.

The wheels were coming off with the kids too. Eden had been begging for months to homeschool . At her Valentines’ party I found out she had told everyone she was leaving after the party and that some of her friends had been sobbing in anticipation.

“It’s not going to happen.” I assured a couple of concerned mothers. Apparently Eden had offered for me to homeschool some of her friends too, as their mothers worked outside the home.

“It’s not going to happen,” I told the second grade wanna-be dropout. “Not this year. We’ll talk about next year once the house is finished.”

Valentine’s isn’t really a big thing for Paul and me, but I usually do something for the kids, (chocolates and a card or a special breakfast) and I think that’s important, especially as they get older.

I can’t even remember if Paul got me a present last year, but I do know he gave me a card.

 

I’ll be honest, it didn’t look promising. And then I opened it.
Please note the googly eyes to the right and below.

I’m sorry you don’t get the lovely effect of glancing at the crazy eyes and then reading the copy.

I loved that Paul characterized himself as happy during such a crap of a time.

We were children when we started dating.  I was in 9th grade and Paul was in 10th, the ages Lydia and Christopher are now. Paul’s dad took his own life a year later and it’s been up and down ever since.

So much has been taken from us but, at the end of the day if all we have is each other and the kids, we’ve been given so much.

Fiction and Non

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I was talking with Eden the other day about writing and the fire.

She is an accomplished writer. When she was in Kindergarten she wrote a book for her dad, a memoir, as a gift for Father’s Day. The plan was originally for it to be forty pages (each page being a chapter) but she settled for twelve, I believe. She went on to write many more books all of which I stacked on top of the bookcase in the hall outside our bedroom. I walked right past it that last morning and I have wished, more than once, that I grabbed them on my way.

The other day I told Eden that someone had asked me to write a short account of the fire but I was having a little trouble.

She sat up straight. “You need to write her back and tell her (the editor) that it’s impossible; it’s going to be long or nothing at all. It’s impossible for it to be short. I was going to write a book about it but I decided not to because it’s too long.”

“You were going to write a book about the fire? When?” I said.

“In second grade.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Cuz in a book you have to write your feelings and all that stuff, but in a story you don’t have to. It’s just a story, such as:  ‘Henry held the frog. Henry thought the frog felt nasty.’ That’s random, but it’s something.”

I agreed. It was.

“In a story,” she continued, “you don’t have to say, ‘But I was really scared.’

Small Appliances

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The good thing about losing everything is that you get to buy all new stuff.

Surprisingly, this didn’t really excite me. I’ve never been much of a shopper and after the fire I was really clear on how little we needed.  I didn’t want to rush out and buy a bunch of things. And yet there were little pockets of interest where my mind would go and rub its hands together in gleeful anticipation.  One of these was small appliances.

In the kitchen of the house that burned I tried to keep the counters uncluttered.  As I planned the new kitchen I thought carefully about my counter real estate.  I loved my jadeite green Kitchen Aid stand mixer.  My old kitchen was all white and the pop of color was so pretty and cheerful, but I could not find a replacement for my Kitchen Aid.  Apparently it was a special Martha Stewart shade only offered through Williams Sonoma for a limited time.  If it wasn’t going to be a pretty green I decided I wanted the mixer in the pantry.
Waring had a blender in jadeite that was just beautiful but we don’t use a blender often, which brought me back to a toaster.  I did find a minty green one that was so pricey I would be embarrassed for you to know how much. 
I hadn’t completely ruled out the blender and there was still the dim hope of finding the stand mixer on ebay, so I just thought about it from time to time. But I was leaning towards the ridiculously expensive toaster.
One day a large box was delivered to our door.  It was addressed to Paul and I was so excited   I think I called him at work to ask if it was OK for me to open it. He said it was something that he had ordered.

I had an immediate sense of foreboding which was confirmed as soon as I pulled this bad boy out of the box.

Holy Cheese and Crackers, Batman!

It boggled the mind and the senses. You can see that it’s a black plastic, two slot toaster with a…is that a GOITER?

Yes, my friends it is.

OK, it’s merely a goiter-like plastic appendage and it serves a purpose. That’s an egg poacher perched on the right side.  See the steam gathering?
Back To Basics is the brand name however, as those illustrations on the side show, this toaster is anything but basic.  

Below is Paul with Christopher, last summer. Doesn’t he look like a nice man? 
He is a nice man. 
Doesn’t he look like someone who, if he wants to poach an egg in a plastic goiter whilst toasting his bread you should just let him? 
Thinking about it that way and looking at his kind and handsome face, I know we should. Especially when I remember that he ordered the toaster within months of someone burning down his house. 
This wasn’t so clear to me when that plastic monstrosity was taking up half the counter at the rental house and leering at anyone who made the mistake of glancing at it. I need to remind myself that it was my house that someone set on fire as well.
We had all been hurt and PTSD is real, people. And yet, even without PTSD, I think Paul would have been tempted to order that toaster and I, almost certainly, would have pitched a fit.
When Paul came home that night I ranted how I wanted a four slot toaster, maybe a pretty one not this hideous, black plastic, bulbous nosed, two slotted one. 
Paul told me I could buy the pretty one, still.
I complained about how much space it took up on our small counter. He said we could store it under the counter in one of the nearly empty cupboards and I realized I was being a jerk and apologized.  Paul forgave me, as he has on so many other occasions, bless him. At the new house I found the perfect spot for it in a drawer at the end of the island just above the drawer where the bread and peanut butter and Nutella live. It’s almost like it was meant to be.  
The kids loved it immediately.  Paul makes them egg sandwiches almost every morning before school.
I want to suspend my snap judgments. I need to hold back my visceral disgust with things that intrigue or interest my family.  I want to be more curious and open for all our sakes.
 Do you have any suggestions?

Building the Story

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Today I’m working on a short account of someone setting fire to our home, of losing everything and rebuilding.

Long time readers and friends might have seen “short account” and registered a red flag.

I hear you.  I see it waving too. Short has never been my strong suit and I don’t feel ready to summarize the experience. We all know I can write about the fire and of losing everything, but when I think about trying to tell the story cogently and well my brain hurts and I imagine it looking like the picture above.

Because rebuilding was as much of the suffering as the fire, in some ways, I’ve only begun to mourn.  The story of everything isn’t finished.  I don’t know where I am exactly, maybe just breaking ground.

But someone wants me to tell the story. I’m being offered a wonderful opportunity and I don’t want to squander it.

Maybe I need to look at this “short account” as a blueprint. I don’t have to actually build a house today, just write the plan for what I want it to be.