Replaceable

What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

I have been in this position before, as a child we would have coal delivered for our furnace to keep the house heated. A truck would come and put a contraption through the side window of the basement (it was a window in the room that the coal was stored).

On this particular day my siblings and I where playing outside. My bother was charged at times with putting the coal in the furnace, making sure he closed the door and cleaned up afterwards.

There were several rooms in our basement. My grandfather had a work area, there was a laundry area, storage area and our larger toys, such as Barbie house, walking dolls, , chatty Cathy dolls and a train set in a room adjacent to the furnace room. My oldest and one of my youngest sisters where the last two people downstairs.

We were watching tv and all the sudden smoke was coming out of the vents. My mom said fire, my brother and I ran out the house to pull the fire alarm.

The fire station was just a block or two away, they came put the fire out….it was a mess. The men on the block with my father, grandfather and other male relatives cleaned up the basement surveyed the loss and spoke amongst themselves while the women made coffee and sandwiches.

We were shuffled off to bed to discover in the morning all of our important material items where burnt and thrown out. We fussed and cried. Our parents expressed their disappointment in our behavior explaining our lives were more important than things. It really didn’t matter to us our toys where gone even though they where replaced later.

I learned at that time material things are just that they may be important for that moment and in that moment the devastation is difficult even unbearable but my life was more important. Although we didn’t lose all our possessions my parents still had a loss of material possessions unreplaceable.You can replace things,you can not replace yours or anyone else’s life.

In short, I would rebuild……

Have a great Sunday…..Donna