I’m grateful Lisa Williams set up a PayPal account for donations to help Jay McCarthy and his family recover from the fire at their home yesterday. I’m sorry for their tragedy but glad everyone in his family was okay.
After I read Jay’s post describing the fire, yesterday afternoon, I drove to the grocery store and made the mistake of turning on the radio in the van. I think I should stop listening to commercial radio. Perhaps it was me. With the topics of life and loss on my mind, I was feeling intense and sensitive.
A commercial for AAA came on the air. It was supposed to be funny. It was supposed to be about friendship. In the ad, one friend offers to another that if his car breaks down, he’ll pick him up. But then, this friend makes multiple excuses why he isn’t available…most of the time. AAA then emphasizes that friends aren’t reliable. Friends are flaky. So buy AAA for those tough times.
In the mood I was feeling, this commercial made me mad. What is friendship if you can’t call me in the middle of the night and ask me to pick you up when your car breaks down? What is friendship if it isn’t during the tough times? What are friends for? Is it money that makes a relationship?
Today I saw the premise behind this commercial proven wrong in blogs. Looking on Feedster and reading through my aggregator through the day, I’ve seen people who know Jay in person and people who have only exchanged links with him gather around him in his need and tell him that they are his friends, people expressing sympathies, people asking Dude, Jay, how else can we help?
In addition to Lisa William’s kayak excursion, this morning I also woke up while reading Lenn Pryor’s post on Lessons in Life From Two Cats:
I stood by and watched as a 6′ 2″ grown man with children balled uncontrollably in my driveway. He had lost a friend of many years and it was if his own child lie there. I tried to comfort him, I didn’t know what to do. I just let him have his moment with his friend. I had a hard time not crying myself it was all too much pain. So much pain, suffering, and anger had interrupted my beautiful saturday afternoon and it was almost too much to bear. After a while he asked for a box to take his friend home. We got him one and a towel to wrap his little body in. He carried him back across the street to his party, I went inside shaking.
I left his post remembering his admonition and encouragement:
Two cats reminded me today that we can lose people we love in a moments notice and that we should treasure them everyday. As hokey as it sounds, two cats reminded me to love everyone and everything around me for the suffering of the world can be too hard to bear. Compassion and friendship matters more than anything.
If this was a heavy post … apologies. Go hug your animals and look them in the eye and connect sentient being to sentient being. For that matter go hug anyone that you care for and have a good sunday.
Then in the afternoon I came into the house, after working outside, to get my wallet before going to the grocery store. As is my habit, while stopping by my desk, I took a look at my aggregator, taking a moment to read Jay McCarthy’s blog.
Jay titles his posts in creative ways, and I find it’s a bit of a game to try to determine his source of inspiration: music, culture, literature, news, someone else’s post, occasionally something I’ve read or written… But soon after I began reading Fire, Fire, House on Fire, I realized that he was not making any kind of cute or clever reference to someone else’s life:
It is 7:08 AM on Sunday, May 23rd 2004. I am sitting in my car behind my burning house. Just about two hours ago my house was struck by lighting and I woke up to the sound of the fire alarms. Although, at the time I did not know about the lighting.
Soon I am in shock also, and my momentary trip into the house for my wallet takes longer than I had thought. Although I haven’t talked a lot with Jay in person, we have had some blog dialogue, both silly and serious. His posts have been a frequent topic of conversation in our home these past few months. We are fond of him in our family. When we had dinner with Lenn the other night, I asked the girls to name bloggers they knew, and the first name off of their lips was “Jay”.
It is now 5:25 PM and I am sitting in my cousin’s room at my aunt’s house. The whole top two floors of my house are gone. The rest of the house is flooded and damaged by smoke. I went into my room to sift around a bit and managed to take out my passport and my other computer from about a foot of debris–ash and soot. #
After some wandering around, Amanda came over and we went to the mall so I could get new clothes. It is very strange, because right now I could hold everything I own on my person.
The closest I’ve come to something like this happened when our van caught fire last summer. I remember calling Ted from my cell phone to tell him “The van is on fire.” Yes, I tried to say it as calm as I could. I did feel mostly calm. But it was strange. Strange to stand there on the sidewalk with Abigail and watch our van burn. Strange to wonder what would have happened if I had kept my head turned a few moments more or decided to keep driving despite the smoke. Strange to think how easily our lives could have ended in an ordinary way, while driving the van to the grocery store with my little girl. Abigail still talks about it. For a while she and her sister would point to pictures in the newspaper saying “This is what we’re going to buy when our new van catches on fire…”
Eventually I took my wallet and went to the grocery store. In our new van. By myself. I felt sorry and sad for Jay, imagining what it must be like for him and his family to lose their home. To lose possessions.
Even now, before it has even really set in and before I’ve had a chance to fully comprehend what happened I’m thinking of ways I may run my life differently. Silly things like, maybe it isn’t so important to save the box that my Apple computer came in, or maybe I should just read books at a library rather than saving them so that they rot away on a shelf. I feel a very New-Age-lame feeling about the impermanence of material possessions.
I’ve written about my struggles with my faith. How sometimes I’m not sure if God exists. At least that’s how I can feel. I’ve got my doubts. I’ve got more gripes than gratitude at times.
But this morning, on this sunny Sunday, after reading Lenn and Lisa’s posts, sharing their slices of life, feeling grateful for them, I said, “Thank you God that I have these friends.”
This afternoon, after reading Jay’s post, I said, “Thank you God that my friends are alive.”
Just the other day I was making a list in my mind of all the Christine Dente songs that talk about time. Then I checked her web site and saw that she has posted another journal entry, this one about time, inspired by her fortieth birthday and woven from her lyrics.
Children are brilliant refractors of time. Our three came along and changed the spectrum completely. They shrank it down at first, taking up so much time that we couldn’t find any for ourselves. Then they fanned it into warp speed, growing so fast we wondered where the time had gone.
Christine’s lyrics and perspective on life resonate with me deeply, and at least one song on each of her albums wrestles with time, how fast the days disappear, how to measure our moments and how to savor the seasons. Her solo album has been out for several months now, but it is seems quite appropriate to begin playing Summer
How short the days are long
How fast the days of slow go away
So I’m wading right in
Playing your games
And I’m running the full length of summer
By your side
I love this color – I think it almost talks to me – although I also think I need to find a better word than “orange” to describe it.
Yesterday I was tired after dinner. I had dishes to do, a floor to sweep and food to put in the fridge. Abigail and Michaela had made little presents for me. But I confess I felt exhausted and that I had my own list of what needed to happen. Opening their gifts was one more thing to do.
But as I sat on the living room carpet, in the last moments before their bedtime, unwrapping their paper presents, I realized what I had missed. Abigail and Michaela had each made me a drawing. Abigail’s said: I LOVE YOU MOM.
Here I had thought it was one more thing to do. When all my daughter wanted was to tell me she loved me.
