Cheerful Abundance

Last night at midnight, my phone beeped; my calendar, reminding me of the day. But I didn’t need the reminder. Today is our fireversary: the anniversary of the day an (alleged) arsonist set our home on fire, because he (allegedly) felt that we weren’t paying him enough attention, him and his poor-me problems. He set up a lot of drama in his life, our (alleged) arsonist, escalating his efforts exponentially after his wife finally gave up and left him to his own devices.

It was dark and it was cold, and it was late. I had been in an evening class, with my phone off, and 2 blocks from my house all I could think about was how badly I wanted to go home, get into my pajamas, and make some hot chocolate. Maybe watch the Daily Show. I could smell the smoke, and assumed it was from fireplaces, fired up against the bitter night. That is what I was thinking about, when my husband darted out in front of my car, two blocks from the house. He didn’t want me to turn the corner, to see the firetrucks outside, my garden in ruins, the gawkers standing around in the cold, the company waiting to start the board-up.

He had arrived home from work hours earlier, early enough to smell the smoke when he stepped off the bus, to see the flames shooting out of the windows. Early enough to stand on the lawn and watch his house burn, his dog and both cats inside. He wanted to spare me that experience.

We were just a few weeks away from becoming first time parents, and in a gesture of faith that our adoption would go smoothly, had just started to set up the nursery. Stuffed animals, toys, armloads of clothes – all covered in soot, and smoke, and creosote. We were happy – really happy, in all the best and most intangible ways. I was a few weeks away from starting parental leave, we were a few weeks away from celebrating our last Christmas without children, we were looking forward to a booze-soaked, relaxing holiday season, while we prepared for our trip to Ethiopia to meet and bring home our children.

But while we were upstairs, working hard on the whole ‘having a great life’ thing, by holding down jobs, making plans for the future, working hard and being responsible adults, downstairs, two floors below, our (alleged) arsonist was feeling deeply sorry for himself. Why wasn’t the world according him the kind of attention he felt he deserved, despite the fact that he did nothing on this planet with his life that in any way contributed even the meager-est amount of good? How could he get more attention? And then it (allegedly) came to him. He (allegedly) snuck out to the hallway and removed the batteries from all the public smoke detectors. He (allegedly) filled half empty paint cans with paint thinner, and then he (allegedly) dumped boxes of nails, bullets, and carpenter staples inside of them, (allegedly) making bombs. He (allegedly) covered all of his living room furniture with accelerant, and then he (allegedly) positioned himself at his own back door, so that he could (allegedly) make a dramatic escape.

Our plan to have a leisurely 4 weeks in which to prepare for our trip to Africa, and to savour the last month of no-kids living was gone, obviously. The aftermath of a fire is a mess: not just the cleaning up part,but the back-and-forth with our insurance company, the constant repairmen, visiting and scheduling and waiting for repairmen, the smell. Oh, the smell! Every single thing we owned had a patina of creosote on it, and smelled like smoke. Every thing we had bought for our babies smelled like death and fear and the bitter aftertaste of fried electrical wiring.

It is all alleged, because even though the firemen saw clear signs of a deliberate fire, including accelerant lines on the walls and furniture, the city doesn’t pursue arson because it is so hard to prove. Unless someone had seen our (alleged) arsonist in the act, they wouldn’t spend the money to go to court, and he walked away free from his actions. He got what he wanted. As members of the condo board, we stood in his unit the next day (that is his place, in the picture above), and saw the streak-marks where something flammable had caught first, leaving charred sunburst patterns on three walls. We saw the aftermath of his paint-can bombs, set up so that the fire, when traveling to the 2 units above him, would have trapped us in the back of our apartment, a wall of fire between us and any of our exit doors.

We also, to add insult to injury, saw our mail in the rubble of his place – packages and letters that he had been pilfering from our mailbox, a large communal bin for packages too big to fit in the letter slots in the lobby. A package of clothes that I had ordered was in the bedroom, ripped apart. Ladies Christmas pajamas, and a bathrobe, a packing slip with my name on it, stolen by a man who lived alone and thought the world owed him something, and that he could take whatever he wanted to take.

I harboured a lot of anger about what happened that day, and what happened in the days following: the insurance company that let us down, the legal system that let us down, the insane amount of extra stress we carried at a time when our only focus should have been on our impending parenthood, the way we lived with the smell for months and months, surrounded by loud air cleaners that cleaned nothing at all, how our plans to sell our place that spring were ruined, because nobody buys a unit after a fire. Not for anything close to market value, at any rate.

But I can’t let him win. I can’t let our (alleged) arsonist, possibly the biggest waste of human life and effort I have ever had the misfortune of knowing, win. And that anger was a form of attention for him, even if he isn’t around any more to feel it. So on Fireversary, we celebrate our own win. I won a family – a husband who is the kind of man that would stand out in the bitter cold of a miserable November night six years ago, and wait for my car to drive by, just to save me the pain he himself had just experienced, of driving up and seeing the horror, alone. Two children who make every day a blessing, who light the world with their humour and their kindness and their ridiculous shenanigans. I live in a warm, cozy bungalow, in a lovely town, with my wonderfully flawed and perfect family, where we play endless games of Candyland, eat cookies, read books, and enjoy each other’s company. And somewhere out there, out in the bitter cold, is a sad little middle-aged man that nobody loves, that nobody would ever give a second thought to. A man that contributes nothing of worth to the world, that is as useless in thought and action as a person can be, a pathetic, puling little shell of a human being.

I win.

Today, we played games as we hid in the basement against a huge wave of storms that battered the state. We watched TV, snuggled, took naps, played music, danced, and when the eye of the storms went over us, ran out and played in the puddles, jumping until we were soaking wet, then running back inside, to a warm bath.

Today, we ate dinner as a family around the dining room table, the kids in their flannel pajamas, cozy after a warm bath. We had a hearty kielbasa, bean, and tortellini soup, with crusty garlic bread, told jokes, and we talked about the week ahead, and the kids begged for gum (NO!) and then they wiped down the steam that had collected on our front windows while the soup had cooked. We poured them into bed, overtired and ready to sleep, and now I am off to watch a little TV with my husband, and maybe have a little hot chocolate. We spent the day happy, healthy, warm, and laughing.

You can’t burn this down, is what I wish I could say to him, our (alleged) arsonist.  You might be able to light a match, but at the end of the day, you can’t burn us down.