By Hallie J Carl
I gulped and stared at the buttons on the phone. I knew I should call 911. The reminders of adults rang in my ears: 911 was only for emergencies. It made me hesitate. Is this an emergency? My eyes looked out the kitchen window to those flames, that were getting bigger and more threatening looking with each second.
Most of us probably have a few moments in our lives we would consider emergencies. Where our brains freeze and we just want what is happening to stop and go back to how it was before. Maybe we’ve been a horrific car accident or have been the victim of a violent crime. When events in our lives have a before that seems normal and peaceful, and then an after that seems broken and traumatic, it is hard to move forward.
Trauma is a loaded word, meaning generally people have a reaction to the word itself. I believe this comes from a lack of understanding or seeking to understand. If can be challenging to be a person of empathy. Someone who will lean in and listen. Who will hold a story with caution and will be careful about what they say.
A great guide to understanding trauma and what happens in the body is The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. Reading this book, and counseling (shout out to therapists….especially mine!) has really helped me to begin the process of realizing that my body is trying to tell me something, to protect me or to care for me. “When something reminds traumatized people of the past, their right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present.” Van Der Kolk also says, “Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else’s mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety.”
I was home alone.
They worked at cabinet makers and had been busy with a new complex of doctor’s offices. Normally I went with them as they installed their work. But hanging out alone at a brand new office complex where my parents were working had lost its adventure and fun. I had listened to my only cassette tape for my ultra-cool Walkman until I knew every word, every twang, every echo of Patsy Cline’s voice from the Sweet Dreams soundtrack. So, when I asked if I could just stay home while they went to work, they agreed. I was excited.
While my mom was giving me the typical instructions that one gives a child when you leave them alone: Don’t open the door for anyone, stay in the house, and so on my Dad said, “Hal, here’s the phone number of where we will be.” He took out a stubby carpenters pencil and wrote the number on the wall.
Yes, you read that correctly, he wrote it on the wall. The home I spent most of my pre-married life was always in a state of change. My parents loved dreaming and remodeling. A wall being knocked down here, a wall being added there. So—there was a space where my parents had drywalled in a doorway, but had not completed the finishing process yet. That’s where my dad scrawled the number. I giggled out loud. My mom rolled her eyes in a laughing manner at my Dad. How many parents write things on the walls in their houses?
My parents loaded up their stuff and left. I was excited to be home alone. I walked around the quiet house, feeling as adult like as a ten year old can. I tried to make a plan for my stolen time. What to do first? One glance at the clock told me that it was almost time for Magnum P.I. to be on, so I settled into the rocking chair and began watching. About halfway though the episode (at a commercial break), I got up to use the restroom. When I came back out into the living room an acrid smell hit my nose. Smoke? Weird.
I wondered if my mom had left something on the stove, so I walked into the kitchen. That’s when I saw it. Through the kitchen window something on the patio was on fire. Big, bright orange flames danced high, flickering against the patio roof.
Panic shot through me. I needed to call my parents! They would know what to do. After a moment of being frozen in place, I ran into the living room at looked at the wall where my Dad’s handwriting was. I tried to remember the number as I ran back to the phone in the kitchen. For the younger readers, this was well before cell phones and well before a cordless home phone. There was one phone and it was attached to the wall in the kitchen.
I sprinted back and dialed the scrawled number. The recording told me I had dialed a number that was no longer in service. Tears streaming down my face, I ran back to the living room again to look at the number. I probably got it wrong. Dialing it again, I wanted nothing more than either my mom or dad to answer. But instead, the mechanical voice again.
I gulped and stared at the keypad on the phone. I knew I should call 911. But I had so often heard how it was only for emergencies. It made me hesitate. Is this an emergency? My eyes looked out the kitchen window to those flames, that were getting bigger and more threatening looking with each second. I didn’t feel so adult like anymore.
Hands shaking, tears flowing, I dialed 911.
A woman’s voice said, “911, what’s your emergency?”
“My name is Hallie Jene Hosch and my house is on fire. Please send a fireman!”
“Are you home alone?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” I cried. “Please send firemen!”
“Ok Hallie, they are already on the way. You need to go straight outside and wait for them on the curb. Do not stay in the house. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said through tears, my voice shaking. I hung up the phone and without hesitating I completely ignored her instruction. I ran to my room. I know the woman had told me to go outside immediately, but if this house was going to burn down, I had three things I needed to rescue. Chippy, my beloved stuffed monkey, my blanket Humpty Dumpty, and Elizabeth, my Cabbage Patch Kid. Once I was in possession of my cherished items, I ran out the front door and onto the sidewalk.
I stood there shaking, crying for what felt like forever. In the distance I could hear the wail of sirens.
“Hallie? Are you ok?” I turned to see our neighbor Mike from two houses down running toward me.
“Our house is on fire,” I cried.
“Stay here,” he said to me as he ran to the backyard.
I nodded as he ran away from me. I remained locked in place, clutching my comfort items in my arms. The sirens were getting louder.
The fire truck turned onto our street and came racing up to the house. Men in large fire gear piled out of the truck, getting their equipment out. One came up to me, looking around any sign of parents. “Hi there. I’m Bill. Are you doing ok? Are you hurt?”
“I’m not hurt,” I said quietly, so scared.
“Where are your parents?” He asked me kindly.
“They are working right now. I was home alone.”
His head tilted as he looked at me, “Were you playing with matches?”
His question startled me. Why would I ever do that? Suddenly, my stomach felt worse than it did before. He thought I did this?? “No! I was watching Magnum P.I. and I got up to go to the bathroom. When I came out I smelled smoke and thought it was the stove. That’s when I saw the flames outside.” I spoke quickly, my voice quivering.
“You sure you weren’t playing with matches?”
My stomach flipped again. I felt desperate for him to believe me. “No, I would never do that!” I felt confused. Why was he asking me this again?
Another fireman came out from the backyard and spoke to Bill. “It’s all put out. The neighbor helped a lot. He got out the hose and started extinguishing it out before we got here. There were some charred rags on the wood bench”
Bill nodded and urned back to me. “Hallie, how can we get ahold of your parents?”
I bit my lip. The story of the phone number on the wall didn’t seem funny anymore. I tried to explain that I couldn’t call them. At this point, our neighbor, Mike came out from the backyard, standing awkwardly nearby.
Our street was a friendly one. We knew every neighbor. Mike and his wife and two kids lived two houses down. Occasionally my brother would babysit for them. They hung out in their front yard a lot. They had a few exotic birds in their house, which seemed pretty cool to me.
“Is there any way I can leave her with you and your wife until her parents get home?” Bill asked Mike.
“For sure, we would be happy to.”
I walked nervously down the street with him, his wife Kathy walking toward us and giving me a hug when she reached me. But I was worried. My mom had told me to not be outside. What would happen when she called to check in on me? I really wanted her to be home.
I rocked in the chair I was sitting on. Nervous. Jittery. Mike and his family did their best to care for me in this moment. But when I saw our car pull onto the street relief flooded me. My mom got out and saw me down the street and began running.
When Mike explained what had happened to her, she was devastated. As a parent now, I can only imagine how it would feel to be gone somewhere and leave your kids home and have the house start on fire.
Later that night, Bill the fireman called my mom. He explained to her that the fire had been caused by oily rags being left on a wooden bench in the sun. “They spontaneously combusted.” (I was vindicated. No matches were in play!) But my mom had been the one to put the finishing touches with stain on the cabinets. She had left the rags on the bench to dry. Being from Nebraska, it was unheard of for something to spontaneously combust in the Arizona sun. I know she felt terrible about causing the fire. But it had truly been an accident.
The season after this fire was a one of constant trauma responses for me. Flames frightened me to no end. Birthday candles had to be extinguished in water. The stove needed to be checked every night before bed. Fireworks were enough to send me into a full fledged panic attack.
But the weird thing about my trauma response, is I was the only one who had it. No one else in the family had been there to experience the terror of your house being on fire and you being powerless to stop it. Going back to the statement by Van Der Kolk, “Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else’s mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety.”
I was able to move forward into a place of understanding I was in a safe place with safe people was because of the way my family cared for me and were doing everything they could to make me feel safe and held.
In this world, we are surrounded by hurting people, suffering people. They stand in line in front of us at the grocery store, they deliver our Amazon packages, they teach our children, they are our doctors, they sit in the pew next to us at church, they are in the same movie theaters, attending the same weddings. They are our friends. They are our family. They are the strangers.
We need to be safe places for people. Truly seeing and hearing those we encounter. Binding up the wounds rather than causing them to be deeper.
The house didn’t have any permanent damage from the fire. There were some slight char marks where the flames licked the ceiling. But the main casualties were the oily rags, the wooden bench they were on, and me. The trauma from that day has healed. It’s bound up. I like to have candles lit, have a fire in our fire pit outside, and campfires are one of my favorite things ever. Healing can come into the hurting places. But being held comes first. Being heard comes first.
Storytime with Hallie 
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