Last week as I was starting to get the girls ready for bed, we heard sirens. Lots of sirens. Soon the flashing lights danced their way across our walls and ceilings and the wailing was outside our house. We all rushed to the window and saw four fire trucks blocking our street. Since our houses are all in a straight row it's impossible to see anything without opening the window and leaning out, which is what I did. Clouds of smoke enveloped the street and seeped into our bedroom. I couldn't see any fire, but the firefighters were concentrating their efforts on a house just five houses down from us. I immediately thought back to last summer when an arsonist in a nearby town set fire to a block of connected rowhomes and they all burned down - there wasn't anything that could be done. We too, live in a rowhome and I started thinking of what I should grab if, just in case, we needed to get out. It soon became obvious that it wasn't that kind of fire, thank God, but in that moment I couldn't think of anything! I know it's a topic for minimalists everywhere to list what few items they'd grab in just such an instance. I've thought of it myself. If there was time, everything I'd grab outside of people, could fit in a backpack:
Money
Camera
Portable hard drive
Folder of important papers
Photos
However, when actually faced with the thought that they might start taking us out of our homes just in case - my mind went totally blank. I stood there holding the toddler in one arm and absently patting my freaked out 9 year old with the other and couldn't think of anything. Later on I wondered how truly prepared I'd be if it had been serious. Clearly a person can't know how they will react until something happen. I'm usually level-headed in emergency situations; I remember being stuck on the subway during 9/11 with several college aged girls who were nearing full blown hysterics and thinking, "Should I be feeling more scared than I am right now?!" I think what interrupted my springing into action was not wanting to frighten the kids. The toddler thought it was fantastic and wanted to sit next to the window as long as the firetruck lights were going off and my big girl was terrified, especially when she heard them breaking all the windows in the house down the street to let the smoke out. When it came right down to thinking about getting "things" out of the house, all I could think of was them, even though that was a given.
Afterwards, when they were in bed and the furor had calmed down outside I considered this more seriously. I'm not in a space where I'd take nothing if I had the chance. In fact, there are several items I'd deeply miss but wouldn't grab because it wouldn't make sense - like books. If it was a situation where there was some time, but it was limited, such as packing up the car to leave before a hurricane - I'm embarrassed to say that aside from the essentials, I'd probably desperately start throwing my books into the car. But other than that, I realized that I really, really don't care about anything else. Of course some silly thoughts ran through my head, such as, "I would miss that new lotion I bought! And it was a whole ten dollars, damnit!" But that's just my mind latching on to the plethora of pointless things it uses to clog my thought processes. No, I haven't reached a mystical Zen space where belongings are meaningless to me yet. I think it's more a combination of letting go of some attachments and the grubby fact that our remaining stuff isn't so great! So, truthfully, if my home looked like a Danish summer house from a design blog I might be a lot more upset over a fire - but maybe not. I'd like to think my house could be filled with lovely things and I'd only suffer a small pang of regret for them because after all, it really is just stuff.
What would you miss?
Quick note here. I've had a lot of problems with feedburner not delivering posts by email lately.
I realized that several of my recent posts have gone undelivered and
I've been trying to fix the problem. I had to finally take what they
call the "nuclear option" so I hope that works.
