Fire

 TW: fire 

My first memory of my father is from the time he almost killed us in a fire. 

He held a parsonage in Woodstock, Connecticut, for maybe a couple of years - I was really too young to know and I sure can’t ask my mother for clarity anymore - but 1979 is the year in question. 

I was just over 3 and my sister was an infant.

I’ve come to understand “flashbulb memories“ indicated by such an intense impression on our psyche as to sear an image of said experience, and I suppose this is one of those. 

It wasn’t intentional - my first memory of my father isn’t one of him committing arson as is legally defined - but I don’t know if I was able to parse out intent until my teen years; and I sure haven’t addressed this one in therapy.

We were in the kitchen, huddled around the table… I can still see that table and the kitchen counter in the haze of my mind. It seemed a massive kitchen by today‘s standards in an old farmhouse.

The oil lantern which was supplying all of the illumination cast crazy shadows against the walls and ceiling as a storm raged outside. It could have been anywhere between November and February but I don’t remember snow. 

And I don’t recall all of the specifics - what I tell myself I do remember was my mother‘s shriek of fear, and the blurred movements of a man trying to save lives. 

He knocked the oil over. It was a simple, clumsy, goof of an elbow that sent the can spinning to the floor and a splash of clear oil up onto the wall - my old man dove to grab it hoping to prevent a major ordeal and in doing so, knocked the lit lamp over and into the spilled oil. 

My mother‘s brief scream, followed by the tumult of being yanked into her arms with my baby sister and hustled out of the house into the relative safety of the driving rain are part of this flashbulb affair. 

That and the look of horror on my father‘s face as the flames leapt up the walls of our kitchen and ended my childish illusion of safety. 

#AbsoluteClownShoes