Only the dead

We had a house in our family that we all called the Big House. Not because it was like a jail, but because it really was a big old Victorian family home and our family had lived in it since before my mother was born.

Most of the rooms were the size of my entire apartment and there were many. Living room, library, kitchen, dining room, music room and a downstairs bedroom. Add a hallway almost twice as big as my apartment and you had the downstairs flanked by a kitchen porch, a side porch and a front porch. Upstairs were six bedrooms connected by doors one to the other and a hall big enough that when it was turned into two apartments, one of them included a bedroom made out of just the end of the hall. There were only two bathrooms and closets were either tucked into these or the little alcoves connecting the bedrooms.

There was a full attic above it and a basement with a warren of rooms below it.

My mother grew up here with her grandparents, aunt, uncle, three brothers and parents. I spent family holidays here and two weeks in the summer. For a while my mother lived here with us, my grandmother, great aunt and youngest uncle while my father was in Germany and later she and my father lived in the entire first floor. This was an important house in my life.

Last night I dreamed I was there doing laundry. In the dream there was my old neighborhood right next door, but that is the way dreams connect things. I was doing laundry and had even put my shoes in the machine when I saw a fire flickering in some outlets above my father's head. I yelled at him that I thought there was a fire and suddenly bedlam ensued.

My father and mother were both trying to put the fire out. My oldest brother was trying to salvage what he could and I was pulling on long over the knee socks because I couldn't find my shoes in the washer!

I finally decided I would have to go upstairs and get another pair of shoes, but by that time the house was pretty much consumed. I was trying to find a safe way up and thought maybe I could take the back stairs when my great Aunt Lela came out of the rubble that had been the kitchen. She didn't think I should try it.

As I stood there watching, three boys between nine and twelve years old came sliding down what was left of the staircase. Typical boys they were laughing and playing as though it were a great escape in a playground rather than a fire.

I stood there in the back yard by the old winding driveway and saw my grandmother looking at the house. She was dressed like she was when I was very small, in a striped sun dress and white wedge loafers.

Then the phone rang and woke me up, but the dream has stayed with me all morning. There was a sense of frustration because I couldn't find my shoes, sadness because the house burned down to black flaking charred timbers, and relief that no one was killed in the fire.

Then I realized that everyone in the dream, except me was already dead.