March 15th, 2003 was not a terribly notable day in history – Hu Jintao was elected President of the People’s Republic of China, a role he would serve in for ten years, the World Health Organization issued warnings about a pneumonia of unknown cause – SARS. In my personal history, it’s the kind of day that became a landmark for me – events are all in relation to it, all of my childhood either occurred before or after the fire.
I wanted to act like everything was normal – I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. Everyone knew, of course. For years afterwards, I would ask my parents not to tell my teachers about it – in retrospect, I have no idea if they did. I thought it would make them treat me differently if they knew.
I didn’t want to look at my house for a long time, much less go inside. Before it was torn down, I did go inside – but only just inside the front door, standing on the orange linoleum one last time.
So much of my memory of this is in images and spaces. I can remember the layout of the hotel room where we stayed for six weeks after, before we got an apartment. I can remember the details of our apartment, the dining room table from my grandparent’s basement. The smell that everything had on it, even after it had been cleaned, and the small white paper tags that were safety pinned to everything.
I didn’t tell people. For a long time, I thought of meeting someone new as a relief – here’s a new person who doesn’t know about the fire, doesn’t think of me as the girl whose house burned down. Somewhere in college, I realized that it would be okay if people knew – once I passed the 10 year mark, it felt distant enough that it wouldn’t define me anymore.
Even if you’re okay with people knowing, there isn’t a normal time to tell someone that your house burned down – it doesn’t fit well into a social script. The Nashville-get-to-know-you script includes telling someone how long you’ve been here, because so many people are new to Nashville. I can’t say “Oh, I’ve lived here for almost two years, and when I was 9 my house burned down. It was an electrical fire.” But then there also isn’t ever a good place to fit it in, so then I don’t end up mentioning it.
When you do tell people, other people bring up their house fires. I can think of three people I know who have had their house burn down and told me about it.
The anniversary part has always been a little weird. For a long time, I would know what day it was and just feel down about it. In 2019, I was on vacation and entirely forgot about it – which is kind of noteworthy in itself. In 2020, everything was shutting down COVID was all over the news, so it felt like a sidenote. Now, maybe I just pause, notice my progress and the passage of time, reflect a bit, and move on.