Dear House
When Healing Requires You to Write a Letter To Your House
Dear House,
I miss you today.
I miss you every day, but now that I have a day 100% to myself (my first since the fire), I miss you even more.
Last night a friend called. She gets little messages from people who have passed over. She’s never had one for me. Until last night. She said my dad told her to tell me he said, “I’m so proud of you.”
My friend only knew my dad through my stories. He died four years before I even met her.
She didn’t have a kind, loving father so she didn’t even know how a father like him would even sound. But she described his voice. She heard him.
He’s proud of how I’m handling losing you.
I wouldn’t have had you, dear House, had it not been for my dad. It was his biggest wish for me to buy a house. For years he sent me books like “How to Buy a House with Zero Down.” I always assumed I’d wait until I was married and there were two incomes to handle the financial responsibility.
Five years after he passed away, though, I entered escrow to buy you with help from his estate. I know he was proud then too.
You became a vessel for my dad’s love.
You held cards, poems, letters, notes he wrote to me since I was a young teen and finally knew to hold onto such things. You held his distinct handwriting. I loved his handwriting.
You held the letter he wrote to his younger brother who was just a boy at the time, when he was in the Navy and had just been to Naples, Italy for the first time.
You held his art collection. Yes, I know most of it was in the garage awaiting my attention, but several pieces were in the house – and they brought me so much joy.
You held the first piece of art he bought for me (to encourage me to collect art) when I moved into my first apartment at Berkeley.
You held his beloved Pentax camera and the thousands of photos he took with it.
I don’t know if you noticed but I had very few photos around the house. But I had three photos of him - at various dad ages - in the heart of the house, the kitchen.
You held his laptops that I regretfully never culled for his writings. He was such a good writer.
You held his wallet. That wallet.
You held the gifts he bought me when we went on our once-in-a-lifetime-father-daughter trip to India.
You held the lovely tablecloths and napkins he found in Russia for me.
You held his t-shirt I slept in that seemed to smell like him far beyond when it should, and always felt like he was hugging me. He was his v-neck white undershirts.
I always felt his presence in you.
Thank you for holding his presence, thank you for holding his love.
I know he - like you - is forged in fire in my heart forever.
And I miss you both today.
love, b.
CARRYING OUR HEARTS THROUGH THE FIRES
I Lost My House in the Eaton Fire. And I am OK.
I look at recipes floating by on Instagram and catch myself thinking “I could make that! I have all those ingredients!”
I look at a potential furnished rental and think “How fun to sit on that couch, watching a movie on that TV with popcorn made in my Whirlypop popcorn maker.”
I literally think probably 200 times a day “I have one in the garage” or “I have to grab that out of my hall closet.”
Walking in the park on a particularly warm day I thought, “I need to get out that pair of Ugg sandals.”
I don’t have any sandals.
I don’t have a hall closet.
I don’t have a Whirlypop popcorn maker.
I don’t have a date, a pistachio or a chickpea.
I don’t have a kitchen at the moment.
And I really am OK.
I will have a kitchen, all the ingredients I need, sandals, a hall closet, etc. All in good time.
Sooner rather than later.
The simplicity of my physical life is actually nurturing because my head, phone and email boxes are overly full with all-things-fire.
I have gifts stacked that I haven’t even opened yet because I don’t have room in my brain, heart or Airbnb for them quite yet. I can’t wait to have the room.
I joke with friends “What’s it like to own a chair?” “What’s it like to own a toilet?” “What’s it like to own a vegetable peeler?”
It makes me laugh every fricking time, no matter what I put after “own a…”
And I am OK.
Last night I heard about a family of five, the parents speak little English. They lost their rental to the fire, and have a budget of $2500 per month for rent. My heart burst. I couldn’t stop crying. That was after hearing about a single mother with a six-year-old child who had been couch-surfing in Altadena at the time of the fire. I don’t know what to do with this extraordinarily difficult information.
The individual and collective pain is just so fricking real. Right smack in the middle of your heart.
And in spite of that, knowing that, feeling all of that, I am OK.
When we Altadenans cross paths in endless lines at the Pasadena main post office (our Altadena post office perished in the fire), we have beautiful bonding conversations. Today a woman and I exchanged a knowing smile. Each of us pretty much lit up.
She spoke first: “How YOU doin’?”
I said “You lost your house too, right?”
She nodded as we both laughed really hard.
It’s like our hearts are outside our chests, but only we can see them, and it was somehow a relief, a comic relief.
She is doing OK too.
Sunday should have been a happy day when I found the rental I may be moving to about 90 minutes from Altadena.
My heart, though, unexpectedly got hit hard by the reality of moving away from my human friends and Stella’s beloved doggie friends, and away from where my house once stood.
That place. Where my house once stood. Where my imagination goes often to the night of January 7th. What was it like for my precious house to go through that, me having abandoned it?
Was the flower heart in the family room first touched by a tiny spark or by a huge enveloping wave of flame?
I imagine the mighty Buddha statue in the center of the house putting up a good yet peaceful fight.
I then get stuck imagining the two bronze buddhas only several feet away, one on the entry table, one on the floor facing all who entered with it’s hand up saying “Yo! You are welcome here…it’s a house where a lot of love has happened.”
How did they melt into nothingness? Nothingness.
And I am OK.
I have a friend who has been helping both Stella and me to be as centered as we can since just days after the fire. This past Saturday when meeting via Zoom, Stella was distracted by the construction going on at this Airbnb (yeah, that’s a thing too…and I am OK) so my friend said she was going to speak to her telepathically. Stella calmed immediately. A few minutes later, she told me their conversation:
STELLA: I miss my house. I miss my friends. I miss our life.
I burst into tears because Stella spoke my own thoughts that I had dared not utter with such clarity and simplicity.
MY FRIEND: It’s going to be OK. I told Stella “Your mom is looking for the perfect place for you to live where you will be happy and have new friends…and you can also sometimes visit your old friends too.” Stella replied, “OK.”
We are OK.
It’s a roller coaster. And we are OK.
Sometimes I lose my sense of humor. And if you try to joke me back into having one, it gets worse.
Sometimes I lose my patience.
Sometimes I feel like I have no skin I am so sensitive.
I have a supremely low tolerance for judgment or negativity. I’m not sure how long that will last. It’s not pleasant since there’s a lot of it out there. I live for the day I can swim with it and not have it feel like shark-infested waters.
I have so many dear friends who have lost everything that my heart can’t carry much more. I can’t be the cheerleader or caring ear to the degree I so loved to be.
But I’ll be back.
And, yep, I’m OK.
In the months leading up to the fire, I was working on a few ideas for children’s books based on what I called the golden thread that was originally woven into my Superhero of Love manuscript. It was removed by the original publisher (it has since moved to a lovely press – Turner Publishing – whose president upon finding out about the fire that devoured every copy of my book offered to send me a complimentary box o’ books!)
I was almost done with a draft of the bedtime book and was talking to a potential illustrator when the fire hit. The most important image in the book will be of two little kids walking side-by-side up a road. We see them from behind, each holding one end of a blanket that acts like a gentle hammock for the big heart it holds.
One of the children had had a very heavy heart and was having trouble moving forward. His friend offered to help carry it for him for a while.
Sometimes we have the bandwidth to help carry each other’s hearts. It’s one of the most beautiful things on earth when we offer to help carry another’s hearts for a spell – in whatever creative way we can do that.
Sometimes we just need it carried a few feet and then we can say “OK, I’m strong enough again. I can carry it myself now.”
So many have offered to help me carry mine since January 7th. So. Many. I am blown away by all the heart-sherpas I have in my world.
I have several friends who pick up the phone whatever time of day or night I call. They give me 100% of their attention. I have interrupted their meditations, dinners, projects, meetings, sleep, and yet they all insisted on staying on with me until they were done helping me carry my heart.
One of those friends is the one I call to vent my anger and frustration so I can then drop it and be a normal human.
Several girlfriends have done something priceless: they cried with me. I have never been in a position in my life such as this, where my loss so deeply touched another to cry with me. I don’t even know how to explain how priceless these moments were.
I have one friend who keeps saying “If you ever need to be reminded of how amazing you are doing, call me, call me, call me.”
Thank you to all who are helping me carry my heart.
Thank you to all who are helping anyone carry their hearts through this smoke-filled landscape.
And now you know why I’m OK. It takes a village.
I firmly believe that we are on a journey to something truly great.
Honestly, what I have learned about LOVE in these three weeks …well, just look at the cover of my book, a heart embraced by flames! I am not unfamiliar with fires of all kinds that have taught me how to love and be loved even more. But now I'm in Superhero of Love graduate school apparently.
I send such love and gratitude to everyone – whether you have lost your home or not. We are all in this love thing together in a very big way right now.
And I hope with all might heart that YOU are OK.
Bridget
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