It was 4am. I awoke. I had already decided I wouldn’t walk this morning. After hours spent traipsing around Northland the previous night trying to complete last-minute Christmas shopping with my eldest daughter, I needed rest. But I couldn’t settle.
I got up quietly, trying not to disturb my sleeping wife, and went through to the living room. I sat at the dining table and started watching YouTube on my laptop. Normally I would wear my headphones, but this morning I simply turned the volume down low. If I hadn’t made that decision, I might not have heard the noises outside.
I am used to waking in the small hours. For years I would just lie there raking over my past. But recently I had decided to use the time more constructively, to start planning for a better future. I started walking at 5am every day. As I walked I would repeat affirmations about the new life awaiting me, how many opportunities there were all around me: abundance, prosperity. Had I set off that morning when I woke, my life would now be completely different.
The noises were odd. They sounded like crackling, as if someone was walking through the bushes in the garden bed. Maybe a cat fight? Were those sounds on the back deck? It really sounded as if there was someone out there. But rather than go out and check – tired, irrational, a little frightened – I decided I would go back to bed. Then, as I headed to the hallway, I heard what sounded like a heavy downpour outside. Strange. I was sure rain hadn’t been forecast.
Finally I peered out through the shutters. An orange glow, like a streetlight, from the neighbours’ back garden. Except I was pretty sure they didn’t have a light back there. Then I noticed the light was pulsating; clouds billowing – sparks, embers. I had my phone in my hand and I called 000 as I hurried towards our front door. Past the bedroom – “The neighbour’s house is on fire!” I shouted to my wife – out the front door. I turned now to look back along the gap between the houses. Flames. Sparks coming from the back of my neighbour’s house. I guessed they were coming from the laundry or kitchen.
My wife and my daughters materialised at our door, my eldest with our cat in her arms. At last I was put through to emergency services. Fire crews were on their way.
Then the wait.
Silence in the street as I watched the orange glow on the side of our weatherboard house. I hadn’t yet finished painting that side of the house: it was on my Christmas holiday to-do list. Another realisation followed: I wouldn’t need to paint it now. I somehow still thought we would escape damage: surely the fire crew would be here soon. But the flames were licking at our family room.
We had only completed our kitchen renovations a couple of months before, and just days before we had installed our entertainment unit and TV. I had packed away 14 years of photo books documenting my daughters’ growth. I had photo albums of my late Dad ready to be packed away, too. I had digitised two videotapes of my daughters as babies, waiting to show them on Christmas day. There were other gifts I’d spent time and money ordering and wrapping, and imagining the girls’ joy when they opened them. Nirvana’s Nevermind and Bon Jovi’s New Jersey on vinyl: two albums which had been the soundtrack to my youth, my daughters now enjoyed as much. Only the day before I had paid for my turntable to be repaired, and we had listened to records while I cooked dinner. In our attic: my Star Wars toys, my records, comic books, my journals, memories of my youth. This all rushed through my mind as I watched. It was all wrong.
My neighbour from two doors down joined us. He put his arm around my shoulder. “You’ll be right,” he said, calmly and quietly. I’ll never forget how reassuring his voice was.
The fire trucks arrived from four different branches. My wife and daughters had already been whisked across the road by another of our neighbours. I felt I should stay at our house, but the fire crews moved me away.
We sat at our neighbours’ round table. I declined the coffee they made for me. From time to time I went outside to watch, while my wife stayed with my girls inside the house. I was still barefoot, in pyjama trousers and an old T-shirt. I refused offers of a jacket, and suggestions that I put on shoes. None of that mattered. I watched the crews on ladders, spraying water into our home through the hole where our roof had been.
The firefighters and the police officers were so tall, their enormous helmets making them even larger. There was one who was really little: I guessed they used him to get into tight spaces.
Around 45 minutes later, the fire chief told me the house was lost. I put my hands to my head and cried out. Later I hugged him then I shook his huge hand and thanked him for the work he had done.
A firey told us that the reason our smoke detectors had never sounded was because the fire had taken hold in the roof cavity (fire travels upwards – I saw it). Had we not left when we did, the smoke would have knocked us out in 30 seconds or so, he said, and the roof would have fallen in on us.
I lost everything that Sunday morning, every thing that mattered. But I had the three most important people in my life – and our cat. We had escaped. I had saved my family.
In the weeks since the fire we’ve been been overwhelmed by the generosity of our friends, the broader network of neighbours and complete strangers who have helped us.
Also I’ve been been thinking about providence, and how I can’t believe that this is any kind of accident – there has to be a deeper meaning.
All my adult life I’ve been in awe of people who have achieved more in their careers and material success than I have. I’ve always felt I’m quite an underachiever, my self-esteem has been very low for most of my adult life for a number of reasons, but I realise now that all the reading and the self-analysis and the seeking to improve myself has paid off – I feel very strong though this, and I realise that I’ve built an inner strength and now I feel I’m modelling that for my daughters, because we’re all holding together pretty well under the circumstances.
We got out alive, and my life has been transformed. This is nothing but a great opportunity for me. My hope is that I can help other people, that’s always what I wanted to do, and I believe now I feel I’ve got the very profound experience that will allow me to do that. I feel blessed, I feel radiant, and I feel massively grateful.