Easter Fires

We used to live on top of a hill. It was so densely covered in live oaks that you had to drive halfway up the granite driveway before you could see our house - grey and white and tall in the midst of the trees. I can't even imagine how many times I drove up that driveway and caught the familiar glimpse of my home. First, as a high school-er in my blue minivan, then home from college in the old Lexus, then back from Austin in the Miata. I even drove up the drive as a married woman in my beloved Tom's black Jetta. But we do not live on that hill anymore and I was reminded of that this Easter as I brought my sweet baby Piper to visit her Nan and Pop in their new home.

It was not my parents' initial choice to move to a new home. They as well as I pictured their grandchildren coming up the live oak hill for visits. As little as I consciously thought about it, I had always expected to be able to bring my kids back to see where I grew up. But, after last Easter, a fire started in my childhood home and burned up a good portion of it. My beloved Tom and I drove to be with my parents as soon as we heard the horrifying news. I'll never forget the feeling I got when I received Mom's initial phone call to tell us our house was on fire; that sort of thing didn't happen anymore, right? A fire destroying a whole house in the modern day world just didn't make sense. Tom and I spent the next couple of days helping my parents sort through the horrors of what to do after you lose everything. We picked up broken pieces of dishes and waited for the specialist to come try to figure out what had caused the whole thing. It was very very sad.

I'm still sad about losing the home where I grew up. Part of the reason is that it was a place recognized by the community. My parents always had an open door policy - literally. We had no idea where the keys were to our house or if we ever had any. There was a constant, pleasant movement of people in and out of our home as friends stopped by for a chat, a meal, a game of Foosball, a time of prayer. Our front porch swing was the site of many life changing conversations and our kitchen hosted more spontaneous musical gatherings than many homes can boast. It was a good place. I wanted sweet baby Piper Joy to know it. I wanted her to know that part of me.

What the fire didn't directly burn it destroyed by smoke and heat. The house was in such a terrible state that my parents had to make the tough decision to bulldoze the remaining structure. There's nothing left of it; my home was carted away in truckloads of rubble. It is strange to think of it.

And that's where this story gets better. There is nothing left of my house, that is true. But, for the time being, my parents still own the property and there is one thing left, the foundation. Or as we have affectionately come to call it, "the slab." It's just a concrete patch on the bald top of a hill and it is odd to think that a family lived so many years on top of it. That's where my parents decided to host our Easter celebration this year. And while I never could have imagined that my new baby's first trip to my childhood home would be to the only part left of it, its foundation, it was a beautiful experience. I know there was something healing for all of us in the celebration of the Resurrection at the site of death and ashes. There was something remarkably right about my innocent little Piper, a new life, patting her sweet baby hands on the concrete foundation. There was something victorious in hunting for brightly colored eggs in the face of pain and sadness. It put new life into the idea of Easter for me. The celebration was, in fact, our own representation of the power Christ brought with his rising on the third day - brings to us each day since then. Though Piper will never get to see the home where I grew up, I believe she will get to see something much better than that as she gets older, and that is the joy that can be found in sadness, the life that comes after death.