WALK IN THE FIRE: ONE STORY
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From: Virginia S.
Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 4:47 PM
Subject: Walk in the Fire: one story
Reply to: 265837
ID: 265840

This is what I had printed for Mother's Day about 5 years ago in a New Jersey local paper. (That's where my mother lives)

Most people can say they are indebted to their mothers for giving them life. Most people’s mothers give them life once. Mine gave me life twice.

It was the middle of the night. The brand new house was dark and all were asleep including the father, mother, four children including a set of twins, and an infant in a crib.

Something happened: no one knows what. Someone smelled smoke or heard a funny noise. Whatever the cause, someone woke up to notice the house engulfed in flames. In an instant the mother was trying desperately to rouse her children.

The three older siblings, the girl and the twins, were sleepy, but tried to make it toward a window. Two of them made it out, but one of the twins was too confused to understand what was going on. The only thing he knew to do was to go back to bed, hoping that this bad dream would be over in the morning. He never made it till morning.

The mother, in the meantime, was grabbing for her two remaining children: the girl in the crib who was not yet three, and her 7 year-old brother. In minutes her way to the escape window was blocked. Her only way out was to try the stairs. With her sleepy little boy in tow and her two-year-old in her arms she made her way down from the upper floor to the lower. She didn’t quite make it. She had reached the middle of the stairs but the fire had gotten there first. As she fell through the burning wood she never lost her hold on her baby. Somewhere between that inferno called the first floor and the front door where the ambulance was waiting, the little boy behind her must have loosened his grip on her gown.

The baby in the crib, by the way, was me.

Of the 7 of us, my father, sister and one of the twins made it out without injury. One twin, my brother Sylvester, as stated before, never made it out of the house. The other child, my brother Ronald was severely burned. In the hospital he asked to be buried in his favorite shirt and tie. He died seven days later.

As for the two-year-old, me, I will carry the physical scars from that night the rest of my life. No amount of taunting from school children ever made me ashamed of my scars. They are a constant reminder of the determination my mother had to protect me, and get me out of danger no matter the cost to her. The cost was high. She suffered third degree burns over more than 50% of her body. The cost to her was eight months of skin grafts and the agony of 1950’s burn treatment.

I don’t know if we ever found out the cause of the fire. The house was totaled. I do know that thanks to a mother’s devotion I am alive to write this story. Her mother’s day present to me was the gift of a second chance at life.