Risa Nye - There Was A Fire Here: A Memoir

THERE WAS A FIRE HERE

Copyright 2016 by Risa Nye

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2016

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-63152-045-7
e-ISBN: 978-1-63152-046-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015956813

For information, address:

She Writes Press

1563 Solano Ave #546

Berkeley, CA 94707

Book design by Stacey Aaronson

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

For my family

Introduction: Nothing

PART 1

Chapter One: The Blue House

Chapter Two: Sunday

Chapter Three: Not Knowing

Chapter Four: Finding Out

Chapter Five: Chimneys

Chapter Six: Lists

PART 2

Chapter Seven: Moving

Chapter Eight: The News

Chapter Nine: Decisions

Artifact: Cat Blanket

Artifact: Orange T-Shirt

Artifact: Tree House

Artifact: Im Terrific Because...

Chapter Ten: The House with the Phone Booth

Artifact: Pink Dress

Artifact: Red Shoes

Chapter Eleven: A Sad Halloween

Artifact: King Kong

Artifact: Rotisserary

Chapter Twelve: Life Begins at Forty

Artifact: Happy Today Pillow

Artifact: Gold Watch

Chapter Thirteen: The Holidays

Artifact: Boxes

Chapter Fourteen: We Are Those Other People

Artifact: Red China

Artifact: Blue Glove

Chapter Fifteen: Other Peoples Stories

Artifact: Aunt Augustas Chair

Artifact: Secretary Desk

PART 3

Chapter Sixteen: Home Again

Chapter Seventeen: My Journal

Artifact: Star-Shaped Cake Pans

Artifact: Boys and Girls Cook Book

Chapter Eighteen: Drawing from the Fire

Artifact: The Indoor Noisy Book

Epilogue: There Was a Fire Here

Appendix

To have nothing. And I mean nothing except the clothes you ran out of the house wearing when you leftwhen you left before the place burned, before you knew whether youd be able to go back. Lets say you didnt take much. Lets say what you are left with is nothing.

What are the things youd miss most? Have you ever asked yourself: if my house were on fire, what would I grab? People ask themselves this question, and they may even come up with a pretty good answer. But the real test is when the fire is raging, and your kids are scared and you dont really know if its a drill or not. So you play it safe and take some important things, but leave others behind, things that you will torture yourself about later on. But your heart is pounding and you cant think straight because smoke and ashes are in the air, and you have kids and you have to get them and yourself the hell out of there before its too late.

I remember exactly what I took with me. It wasnt much. A leather jacket, a jewelry box, photograph albums, and baby books.

Decisions made on the fly.

This and not that.

But heres something I hadnt counted on, a consequence of nothing: the freedom, the lightness. To have nothing means no baggage, no decisions, no choices.

There is a moment when a trapeze artist flies from one trapeze to another, maybe reaching for a partners outstretched hands. Its hang time, a moment when its just you and gravity, when you are suspended between the thing you left and the thing you are reaching for. And Ive heard that particular space and time described as though it were something to be savored and contemplated, even enjoyed, for the sheer excitement of being neither here nor there. Only in between.

I remember that surprising feeling of freedom. Freedom from having. Could anyone else understand this hard-to-explain lightness? And did I ever say this out loud to anyone? No, not in twenty-five years. Only now, as I look back and remember that secret sense of lightness, am I ready to address it.

It was easy to move around without a lot stuff weighing us down. I am speaking now from the perspective of a person who had things, old familiar things, and a nice life. But for a while, I could not fill a shopping cart with what I had left. I would not have wanted to. And that was fine for a long time.

Now, twenty-five years after the fire, my house is full again.

I find myself missing that sense of lightness, that freedom from possessions, and this is a feeling I did not have before the fire. I long for that lightness but do not long for the sense of loss.

And I wonder, is it possible to have one without the other?

In February 1984 our family of four moved into our boxy blue house in the Oakland Hills. After years of living in rentals, my husband Bruce and I were happy to be first-time homeowners. Granted, the house had a few drawbacks. A marble could roll from one corner to the other in our bedroom. The carpet on the stairs resembled old banana bread, and the rooms were painted or papered in wildly competing color schemes. Our bedroom, for example, looked like the inside of a ripe cantaloupe, with jack-o-lantern orange trim. One wall in our son Myless deep-blue bedroom sported lively Noahs ark wallpaper, while the room our daughter Caitlin chose featured an eye-crossing plaid. Shortly after we settled in, we discovered that the hot and cold indicators on all the faucets were reversed. It took a couple of bracing showers to figure that one out. Nevertheless, the house was in a great locationacross the street from the kids elementary school.

And every February clusters of yellow daffodils bloomed in the red brick planters out front.

When we moved into the house, Caitlin was in kindergarten and Myles was still in preschool. As far as Bruce and I were concerned, our family was complete: a girl and a boy, almost three years apart. In the house on Hermosa, unlike the previous rental wed lived in for four years, the kids had their own rooms, and their own bathroom. This was our first purchased houseand we felt the same terror and exuberance that I imagine most first-time buyers feel when they sign that imposing stack of papers.

By the time we bought the house on Hermosa, wed lived in four rental houses over the course of the nearly twelve years wed been married. Not that many moves, really. And we never got farther than San Jose, fifty miles from where we went to high school. We moved there in December 1977, when I was nearly nine months pregnant with Caitlin, because of Bruces first job as a newly minted lawyer. We were about an hour from what we still thought of as homethe East Bay.