On the route that I walk in my little suburban neighborhood full of 70’s and 80’s-era homes, I pass a house that stands out from the rest. Everything about the house is crisp and beautiful. New blue paint. New, neatly painted white trim. Shiny windows, perfect white door, new roof. Once the remnants of construction materials are removed from the front yard, it will probably be photographed for a realtor website, looking like a brand new home.
Having passed this house on my walks for nearly a year now, I have witnessed its transformation, as well as my own. I feel like this home and I share a secret.
When I started my neighborhood walks, this little house broke my heart. It wasn’t just that its roof was charred and its beige walls were streaked with sickly white patches coming down from the roof, places where the fire must have stripped away layers of paint. It wasn’t even the plywood sheets that comprised the front window and door. It was the feeling of emptiness, of loss, and even abandonment that haunted me.
The lawn was in shambles and wild tree branches sprawled overhead. I kept checking the branches for signs of charring, an answer to my question about how recently flames had devoured my little house, but I couldn’t decipher any narrative behind these ruins. While all of the other houses on the street told their own stories, through Fisher Price toys left on the walk or garden gnomes and pinwheels in the garden, this house was quiet.
The only sign of life at the place was the Porta-Potty and piles of plywood in the decimated front lawn. Every once in a while a construction truck would be parked in the front driveway, and I would see a few workers on the roof or in the yard, but I couldn’t get a sense of who had lived there or where they had gone.
For some reason, questions about this place plagued me every time I passed it, its plywood door and window staring at me like a pair of vacant, lonely eyes. I wondered what had caused the fire—was it someone’s fault? Was it a mistake? And how much had the fire taken—was the damage measured only in terms of contractor’s fees or were there hospital bills? Funeral costs? I wondered if a graver loss than the home’s market value is what kept away the former owners of the home.
I don’t think I truly connected with this little house until a few months ago, when I suffered a miscarriage. The flames of loss that I experienced after this sudden and shocking turn of events devastated me, tearing down fragile walls that I had started building around rooms for Future Baby. I hadn’t ever held the little life growing inside me, but I had seen her face, all deep, brown eyes and plump, saggy cheeks. I had felt myself looking deep into her eyes and asking her if she would stay. I offered her the promise of a cozy baby’s room where warm arms would rock her to sleep at night, a living room cluttered with jingling blocks and plush monkeys and Baby Einstein books, a kitchen where we could bake chocolate-chip cookies together.
Before I could even pick the paint for these new rooms inside me, she slipped away. I didn’t even know at first, she left so quietly. With the words, “don’t see a heartbeat…” from the doctor studying the sonogram screen, my own heart stopped, and sparks of anguish ignited. It wasn’t long before the whole house I had been planning and building was devoured.
I felt—empty—for the first time in my life. As I looked at the charred remnants of myself in the aftermath, I tried to discern my story. What caused this, and whose fault was it? Was it anyone’s fault? When there is a fire, it seems like there should be someone to blame. And yet, as I learned over the next few months of grieving, sometimes fires just happen. The best insurance plans can’t do anything to protect you from the threat of loss.
I began trying to assess the damage in my own heart, too, like a claims adjuster circling in and out of the charred remains. How deep had the damage gone? And would it be possible to rebuild, or should I just scrap the whole idea of reconstruction? How could I have real happiness again, when such horrible sorrow and loss lie deep in my foundations? Could I dare to dream about another pair of deep brown eyes looking into mine? I began to wonder if the vacant feeling I was experiencing would be my “new normal,” if the Porta-Potty would always be on my front lawn, as it were.
And so I started to take walks again. Long, sweaty walks with powerful strides. I found that I needed the feeling of moving forward, covering ground, leaving squares of sidewalk behind me. I loved getting home, completely drenched—thanks to the near-100% humidity for which Florida is famous—and having to literally peel my clothing off before jumping in the shower. There was something about the process that felt like being reborn, the shower washing away the sweat, the heat, the days before, and giving me a new start.
It was on these walks that I started to notice the little house, slowly and almost imperceptibly at first, begin to change. It was little things like the new front window, still marked with the stickers advertising their brand, brightening its beige front. The new roof came in pieces, taking what seemed an eternity to cover the charred remains below. It was only very recently that I saw the house looking whole again, the fresh coat of paint putting the first of many finishing touches on months and months of hard work.
As the home has been reborn over the last several months, I realize that I have been undergoing a transformation as well. It was only recently that I started to feel like I could genuinely smile again, and that tears wouldn’t start and end every day.
What did bring tears to my eyes today, though, was to see the crowning glory of the charred house’s renovation—a crepe myrtle tree by the front walk. I don’t remember seeing it there before. Maybe the tree has been holding up empty arms over the front walk for the past year. Today, though, the tree fluttered in the wind like a bustling Jane Austen heroine in crinoline. Full of bursting white blossoms, the tree swayed in the breeze and caught the sunlight in its petals, giving it a soft glow. As the branches were tossed back and forth, delicate petals fluttered from the tree like butterflies and were carried on the wind with a promise:
This house is coming to life again.
Emmanuel Even Now 