What ifs

There's nothing like a large brush fire three doors down from your house to get your heart racing. Initially, you hear the news that it's under control and you find relief. And then hear it's out and no damage to anything but foliage. Great! Thank goodness for protection. The reasonable thing to do is spend your next hours stalking the updates on Facebook and newspaper articles. Then the details come out. How a neighbor refused to give access to their hoses while the fire blazes behind numerous houses. How the Fire Dept arrived 15 minutes after the reported call because we live far out in the county. How a house was within feet of going up in flames. Two to five feet farther and the house would have caught. How the neighborhood association is reporting that all doors were knocked on, but mine wasn't and we were three houses away.

I hold everything together well in the moment. It's the hours after when I have time to dwell that my heart begins to see the what ifs instead of the "Thank goodness for the protection". The what ifs will bother me for weeks possibly months. I've always thought I would be able to get everything important out of our house with the threat of a brush fire. Today I would not have been able to enact our fire plan. It would have just been enough time to gather my kids and get in the car leaving everything behind. My fire plan has always had my husband there to carry the heavy things while I gathered the kiddos and smaller stuff. I may need to reconsider my strategy.