One moment I was sleeping sweetly. The next, jolted awake by a shrieking fire alarm. The time was 2:09am. Horrified, heart racing, I was on my feet in seconds. Andrew was already in the kitchen, checking to see if it was our condo that had set the fire.
That hour between two and three in the morning is such a strange one. Liminal. Especially when the harsh cry of the building’s fire alarm tells you that you may be on the brink of losing everything.
It’s funny where one’s thoughts might go in these instances. For some reason, this happened last July, too. That day, my heart had been racing because I wanted to save my grandpa’s journals. I’m keeping them like a hidden treasure; I still haven’t read them. It weighs on me. I think about it a lot. It weighed even more on me in that moment of sheer panic, deep horror, because I could not locate them. And what if this fire alarm was real? I wanted to take them with me out of the condo, but in my panic I couldn’t think straight — I just couldn’t find them. Meanwhile, Andrew’s panic was rising at the idea that I just wasn’t leaving the condo even as the fire alarm was really insisting that we do exactly that.
Well, last year’s alarm had been blessedly false. So was last night’s (I’m writing this on July 13, by the way).
And I didn’t take grandpa’s journals. (Even though I have indeed located them in my tricky hiding spot — Andrew says I have a real way of squirreling things away and I guess he’s not wrong.)
But I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Even as our fellow condo-dwellers sleepily (and casually, I might add — in high contrast with me and Andrew’s aggressively literal approach to a fire alarm) emerged and joined us at the muster point at the condo across the street.
I sat on the curb and gazed up at our building, blinking in the light of the emergency response vehicles blocking the street. What if this was real this time? What’s the best thing to do in a situation like this? How can I prepare? How can I choose what to save?
Last year when this happened, I stuffed my backpack with books and papers. A collection which in the end, made zero sense.
This time, I prioritized putting on actual clothes — just in case I’d have to wear them for the entire next day or week — them grabbed my purse and water bottle as if catching a sleepy flight. That was it. Once out on the darkened street, I realized our neighbours took even less — the vast majority were simply wearing robes and slippers as if they were just getting a night snack from the fridge.
Maybe there is no “right way” to do this?
After about half an hour we were told it was safe to return to our condos, but I had trouble falling asleep. I could still see the firetrucks’ lights flashing through the bedroom window, and my mind kept asking ‘what if?’ What if this was real? What would I regret not saving?
Does anyone else ever think this way, or prepare for the worst-case scenario — in terms of saving family artefacts and paperwork?