Thursday 1 February 2018

Lessons from little warriors


A terrible thing happened. Our house burnt down. The house that my children have grown up in.  So did the garden with its trees and the jungle gym and sand pit – there are some bricks left to show its outline – and the trampoline, the car port, the washing line, the sheds, the horse’s paddocks and stables. And Beauty’s house. The grandparent’s houses burnt down too, with the swimming pool. And the cattle fields and the garage where we kept the tractor and lawn mowers. It all burnt down. It took about 40 minutes.

The wind blew so hard that we could not hear ourselves speak. Everyone was running  – helter skelter - trying to save what there was to save. Little Adam ran up and down the avenue of Yellowwood trees, back and forth, confused and frightened. “Go to the barn!” shouted Charles. “No, get in the car!” I shouted. 

At last I got them into the car. All three of them, plus Beauty and Danny the terrier. The children cried. I drove through the smoke, dodging phantom firemen and livestock, leaving our life behind to burn and Charles to save it. We also left two cats and Julie the dog. We could not get them. We didn’t know where they were. It was too late. 

That was Saturday. On Monday, in donated school uniforms, the children packed their donated red lunchboxes into their donated backpacks and went to school. They fought over who would sit in front and spoke about how everyone would be nice to them because their house had burnt down. There are others too that have lost their homes, I reminded them.


 They kissed me good bye, “Love you Mom,” and jumped out of the car. I sat and watched them go. “My babies,” I screamed internally, “they’ve lost everything and there they go brave and stoic through the school gates.” And I wept my first big heaving, gasping, shaking, sorry for myself cry, praying no one would notice or worse still, come and ask me: “How are you guys doing? Is there anything we can do for you?” 
 
“Yes,” I would have loved to reply to the well-wishers, “put my children’s home back together. Find Anna’s drawings and Adam’s Lego airplane and put them back on the shelf in their bedrooms please. Take away the mounds of burnt rubble that’s lying on top of everything so that they can go home this afternoon and lie on their beds and watch dust fairies in the shafts of golden light from the old wooden windows that frame the green, green garden where they learnt to climb trees. Put it all back please, because I can’t bear my children’s pain and loss.” Instead I would thank them robotically.




I told myself: I have to hold the fort for them – even though it’s burnt down. I have to be okay even though I’m not okay.  And the enormity of the task made me heave and shudder and snot all over again because I knew I wouldn’t be able to fake it.

Monday passed in mild internal hysteria driven by blind adrenalin. There is a lot to do when everything is taken away. One o’ clock arrived. I donned my Brave Mommy demeanor and went to fetch them, preparing myself for a deluge of melt downs and post-traumatic stress.

“Hi Mom.”
“Hi! How was your day?”
“Fine thanks and yours?” chimed Anna and then: “Here.” She handed me a folded piece of paper.
“What is it?”
“A letter to Julie and the cats,” she said. “I just wanted to tell them I was sorry that I couldn’t save them and I will always love them.”
Her eyes glazed and she looked at me with her big bruised heart. A lump the size of Ayers Rock wedged into my throat.
Then she said, “What’s for lunch?”
“Oh I don’t know,” I squeaked, “What do you feel like?”
“Noodles.”

My lump dissolved and I realised that this courageous nine-year-old had just reminded me of the only thing that would get me through this nightmare: to focus on the present, the here and now. 
And I knew then that if she can do this, so can I.