"Our house had a certain smell to it," said Jennifer Pierre in an article in yesterday's Washington Post. Pierre's house was also destroyed in the fire, even though houses another street over were spared. A sudden shift of wind.
"It was our house. When you come home it has that smell. How can I replicate that smell for my kids. Or is it gone forever?"
When I read this I thought of Suzanne's friend Katie. One day Katie walked in our house — this has been years ago now — took a long whiff and said, "Your house smells like ... West Virginia!" Quickly realizing that this might not have been a compliment, she added that it smelled like West Virginia in a good, spending-a-week-in-a-cabin sort of way. I laugh about that still. What it meant to me was that the house smelled musty. But musty or not, it was one of the few times I heard anyone directly address the aroma of our house.
What would I do if it was gone forever? How can we comprehend the enormity of it all?
In another excellent Washington Post article on the fire, the author Michael Carlston wrote:
We're trying to function, but it's difficult when you lived in one world, and now it's totally different. There's before, and there's after. My wife and I are two active and directed people, but we find ourselves sitting and staring in confusion. When everything is lost, what do you do? What are the rules?