kjpepper | Aug. 4th, 2004

Ever go away from a place, come back, and find something is glaringly, violently and somehow wrongly different?

Granted I have this sort of moment whenever I return to NY, but that's beside the point. I had it in a seriously major way as I was biking down my street coming home from work and looked up to see the house at right charred and boarded up. That was a bit of a shock, especially as I'd seen the folks that lived in that house around the neighborhood (they have a couple of small children) and they always said hello to me, and also, incredibly, there is still a perfectly sound trampoline and swing in the front yard. The swing is especially disturbing/heartbreaking because it's hanging serenely from a tree and still festooned with the garlands of bright plastic flowers, which look very incongruous to the smoke stained remains of the house. I'd briefly considered taking a picture of the odd juxtaposition, but I thought that would be rather rude without the family's permission.

I was also flipping out a little bit after because it was a rather blunt reminder that I need to concentrate on seeing everything around me rather than having tunnel vision all the time. I'd apparently walked right by the burnt shell of this house on Sunday afternoon and didn't notice a thing. (The fire was on Saturday.)

So I'd meant to post about it since Monday night but hadn't gotten around to it until today, when I actually had a moment to check the local paper's web site. Turns out that this is another case of damn-this-valley-is-too-small-sometimes, as I actually do know at least one person in that house a little bit through work. Enough to be all like "Oh my god!" upon reading the article and be that much more relieved that everyone got out of the house okay (most of them were out at the time, then came back to find the street blocked off... boy what a way to come home.) Lucky for them, they're covered by insurance, and the house, despite it being seriously gutted, is structurally sound enough to repair. *boggle* Lets hear it for brick colonials.

Also according to the article, members of the family were incredibly able to see the humor in the situation. One person quipped "We needed new shutters anyway." I'm reminded of a comment

gossamer_gull left in my LJ ages ago about hoping that if one day the same situation applied to her, she'd have a similar attitude. Granted the post in question was about nasty water from our overflowing toilet raining down into our neighbor's kitchen and her saying "No worries, I needed to mop in here anyway." Not quite as life-altering as your house burning down, but there you go.

So yeah. Serious whoa moment. Just a reminder how suddenly and how quickly life can change on you.