fire hazard

About a week ago a truck exploded behind my house. Metallic clanging, like someone dragging a barrel across a railroad track, and then voices interrupted my dreams. There was a loud pop and a roar, and everything started moving. I ran a couple loops through my small house, using up the adrenalin that overpowered logical thinking. I didn't plan for this. The kitchen windows, glowing orange, kept pulling my eyes back as if the flames wouldn't encroach if I kept watching. I managed to think of the file cabinet and scrambled for files that, I hoped, had the important papers--title, insurance, phone and policy numbers I was sure I'd need when my house burnt to the ground. I remembered my cell phone, leashed my dog and was out the front door, in pajamas, legal file folder under my arm. I checked my phone when the fire truck arrived--3:27 a.m. I watched from across the street. When the fire was out, I cried. But, everything, as I reported to friends and family the next day, was fine.

A week later the burnt shell of the Chevy is still there, about 30 inches from my house and charred. Leaves over 15 feet high on trees nearby are blackened. It was so close.

When I bought my house last year I had a thorough inspection. The inspector was a thin man with a mustache that muffled his words. I knew him for less than 3 hours, but I trusted him. After all, he put on a full plastic suit and slithered into my crawlspace to get a closer look at some suspicious mold. (I wouldn't do that for $425!) And he talked to me like a father would. We walked through and around the house as he pointed out all the things I'd need to fix. His words became the dialog in two months worth of anxiety-filled dreams after I'd moved in. I'd dream there was a huge hole in the side of the house, then I'd turn and hear him talking calmly and softly through that 'stashe. "Raise the gutters, improve the basement ventilation, clean the air ducts"--it felt like warning shots. Judging by my guilty conscience you'd think deferred maintenance is a mortal sin.

I went out this morning to look at the spot where the fire had been. One of his first remarks rang in my head: "Trim back those hedges. There should be a space--they shouldn't touch the house. That's a fire hazard." The hedges have grown 10 months since then, untrimmed. I didn't totally get it back then, but it's blatant now. The truck was parked on the other side of those hedges. That space could have been the difference if the fire had spread. It would have been my fault. After all, I'd been warned.

Now I feel shaken enough to have renewed vigilance. As always, my experiences and my thoughts about life are overlapping and I see a new lesson emerging. Where once I thought coping with life's struggles was about erecting boundaries and holding solid, I wonder now if the difference is really in maintaining that cushion of empty space--not to close yourself off to what might come your way, but to insulate yourself with open, yet protective, air. And maybe what makes a person a whole "self" is as much what you are as it is the space that defines and holds you seperate from everything else. It certainly give new meaning to the cliche of
"needing space." But, lately things feel overgrown and weedy, vulnerable to flames. And it all feels like my fault. I've deferred maintenance because I can't decide if I'm more fearful of the fire hazard or the emptiness.