I'm Grateful

Yesterday afternoon Charlie had an orthodontist appointment. Since it was still about 35 below with a wind chill, I decided to drop her off and run a few errands so that the car would actually warm up. As I was returning to get Charlie, I saw a huge fire in our down town area. At the time I couldn't tell where it was coming from but I knew it was not far from where I'd just been. It turns out that it was an out of control fire that was taking up most of the block where the girls go to dance class. The fire started at a clothing store and burned down the block towards the dance studio. Had it happened today instead of yesterday, it would have been during Lily's dance class and She, Emily and I all would have been in the building. Our car is often parked right in front of the clothing store or one of the other stores that burned down. Chances are that we would not have been able to get back to our car with all the onlookers and fire trucks. We would have been stuck downtown until Shawn could have come and gotten us from one of the stores across the street. Had I somehow not noticed the fire, Emily would have been there without a parent, and i would be frantically trying to find her.

I'm grateful that this incident occured when the block was relatively empty and that no one was hurt. I'm grateful to our fire department and the fire departments of the surounding towns who came in and worked through the night in frigidly cold temps to save what they could. The buildings lost are a great loss to our town, but this loss has reminded me how grateful I am for my family and friends and for the first responders who work on our behalf