Our Life Between

“It’s absolutely perfect!”

I could never have designed a more peaceful place to recover for a few days after major traumatic event. Winding stone pathways creep around peaceful ponds, where water flows over mossy rocks mimicking the sound of a permanent soft rain. Sunlight filters through trees whose tops tap a water color blue sky.

This cottage in the woods is idyllic, retrofitted from a place where a psychologist met her patients as they worked to rebuild their lives. So many people have passed through these doors in search of solace and rest. Now it has a bedroom and a kitchen and and Airbnb listing that was a dream come true.

John and I arrived to the steps of Forest Cottage 10 days after our brand new home caught on fire, incinerating the entire 3-car garage and all contents within, smoke and water damage leaving our home uninhabitable and possessions destroyed, but not one person was harmed.

That evening, we were all was visiting neighbors nearby and had driven a car and a golf cart about a quarter mile down the street together. Our older sons, Aidan and Max, left the gathering ahead of us to go home in the golf cart along with dear friends who were visiting from Pennsylvania, the hometown we loved and left a little over a year ago to build a new life in North Carolina. Our guests were on a grand adventure, allowed to visit after much contemplation of the travel risks for a 20 and 18 year old driving down 6 hours in their mom’s minivan.

The boys went home, made milkshakes and quickly headed upstairs to watch their own YouTube channel “Neighborhood Creations” in preparation for filming “Invisiboy 3”, a sequel to their first two productions filmed over the years they grew up together on Old English Lane.

They were halfway through the short video when they heard a noise that alarmed them. As they raced down the stairs, the smoke alarms began beeping and two boys ran out the front door, two ran towards the mudroom door to the garage. As they approached and saw smoke coming through the crack, they made a pivotal decision. They did not open the door, the door that served as a barrier between safety and harm. They turned and ran the other way out down the front steps. None of the four paused to take anything with them, they made every right decision and were safely out of the house within mere minutes.

From there they knocked on neighbors doors and called 911. Just down the street, we got the call immediately. "Your house is on fire," sounded like a joke then suddenly it wasn't. In shock, I started racing through the night, shoes left behind, to get home.

“What?”

I think that’s the only word I said, over and over again, in different inflections. A mantra of disbelief.

And then, “hurry!” to the friend poised to drive us home. “Hurry Hurry Hurry” breathlessly whispered. I couldn’t say it louder because I couldn’t say out loud that this was true.

Until I saw it. Until I heard the distant sirens heading toward us.

Before the car stopped, we were out, running through the street and only then did I scream. “Where are my children?”

To the left, across the street far from the fire, I heard a voice overlapping mine not even letting me finish the desperate question, “Here! They are all here! They are safe!”

And here is where I pause the rewind, where in later days then now I’ll fill in the gaps and details when I can watch them in my mind without turning away. For now, the only thing in this whole story that matters is the voice I heard shouting to my left that night, the voice that said the words that are my mantra now, “Safe Safe Safe.”

13 days have brought us to four ‘safe houses.'

First, a night spent across the street from our home with neighbors who took us immediately in. (My gratitude to this new neighborhood of ours cannot be captured, but I tried. You can read that here.) Then, nearby to close family's house. Then, to Pennsylvania, to return the two boys who could not drive home because their car burned in our garage. We stayed with our old neighbors, branching the then-to-now in a fashion I never would have anticipated. Everywhere we stayed, our people loved us and made it feel like home. (More on our journey home to Elizabethtown, later.)

Now, with the boys at sleep-away camp that was serendipitously planned long ago, John and I are in Safe house #4. And here’s where I begin to write the story.

When we moved from Pennsylvania last June, I wanted to document the experience, write it out for myself and the boys for them to later look back and see the journey that started with trepidation and sorrow about moving evolve into something beautiful of its own, a life filled with new friends and stories.

As we spent a year in the nearest place we could find available to rent, piled together in a townhouse and commuting 30 miles each way to their schools as the house was being built, I thought we were just waiting for our real life to begin. I thought, I'll wait to write the story then. And less than three months after we started what I thought was that real story, we are in between again.

In between.

Less than perfect.

But I think among the many things I’ve learned these past days, one of the most striking is how we are only ever living in the middle. Between moments that are normal, sad, happy, tragic, boring, stressful, exciting, devastating. There is no arrival, there is always just the story we are living the moment we are living it.

And my story has brought me here, to this special cottage, where early one morning I dutifully donned bug spray and ventured out to take a walk in the woods.

I stopped to marvel at a spider web, its own story starting and stopping endlessly, a spider working tirelessly to rebuild what wind or passerby sweeps away. He just gets right back to work.

I paused at a rock garden surrounded by angel statues, and thought about protection and grace.

Then I came across a butterfly bench, and upon it climbed a caterpillar. Delighted, I thought “how poetic.” I videoed the story, zoomed in then slowly out backing up off the path to capture the visual. I thought about the journey of caterpillar to butterfly, the opportunity for rebirth and beauty. How absolutely perfect.

And then, my feet in deep straw grass, I was swarmed by ground hornets.

Feeling a sting at my ankle, I swiped it away then heard increased buzzing and felt additional points of impact. So I started running. Interesting fact about ground hornets, they enjoy a chase.

I crashed through the woods trying to dial John to alert him that I may, like my mother and sister do, go into anaphylactic shock. At least he would know where to find my swollen corpse. As I gracelessly ran while flinging my hair and arms wildly to toss off my tormenters, vaulting over statues of serene bunnies and ornamental garden butterflies, I started laughing and laughing and laughing.

A little later, still alive and covered in a paste of baking soda graciously provided by our host eager to help, I began to write this story down, a story that kept unfolding in real time. I received an email with the lease to move into a temporary home in our neighborhood. My sons will not have to say yet another goodbye in this particular timeline. When we pick them up from camp tomorrow, we will drive them to their next safe place to land.

There is no perfect. There are just all the pieces in the middle that make up a life. And you get to decide when it’s time to cry, or to laugh, to sit down, or to charge forward. Sitting here on the porch of this place, watching fireflies harmlessly light the night, I know that I am safe. And I am in between again.

Exactly where I’m supposed to be.

And a special guest appearance by my new nemesis...