For dinner one night I attempted to use our
fancy wedding present cast iron grill pan to make healthy grilled chicken for
my on going “today the diet starts” diet I seem to always be on. And as the
chicken began to char, smoke, and set off every single fire alarm in my house
it brought back flash backs of Thanksgiving 2008….
It started as every other Kaparos
Thanksgiving did with Christmas music, marshmallow salad, and too much wine,
rum and diet, and Manhattans, basically all the things only expectable on that
special Thursday in November. Our house smelled of turkey and cinnamon. The
dinning room was laid out ready for everyone to stuff their face. The living
room ambience was set with a lit candelabra in the fireplace with beautiful
yellow, orange and red silk leaves lacing around the candle sticks as two
cinnamon scented twig brooms laid on the edge. The perfect place to wash down
the pie and stuffing with more wine as “It’s A Wonderful Life” plays in the
background. Our house smelled, looked and sounded like the perfect autumn
Thanksgiving night. And it was, as all the years before it, the perfect family
and friends Floridian Thanksgiving night.
As the night came to an end and people found their way home
to fall into their well deserved turkey coma, my Mom and I began cleaning the
plates our border collie Toby had not already licked clean. We wiped down all
the tables and counter tops, put away all the extra chairs and poured out the
half drunk wine glasses as we laughed and talked about all the usual gossip. By
now it was about midnight and most things had been picked up and cleaned so I
left my mom, the night owl, and followed in my dads foot steps, heading upstairs to curl up in bed.
As I was in the middle of washing my face I
heard this slightly panicked voice desperately wisper shouting “Elyse. Elyse,
Come here… Quick....Quick!” So I dried my face and ran down stairs. As I
started to ask, “Mom are you OK” I stopped mid sentence when my eyes saw our
beautiful fall candle fireplace display slightly on fire and my mom in front of
it looking around for something to help put it out before more silk maple
leaves caught on fire. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do and my mom was
running through different ways to put out fires. We didn’t have any fire
blankets, or any blankets without big crochets holes in them, which if thrown
on the fire would cause it to grow bigger, rather than the desired putting it
out. As my mom ran around asking me to help and to help her think of
something I just ran back in fourth from the kitchen to the living room unsure
what to do or say. I was, at this point, of little help.
This is when, as the fire with every quick
second grew bigger and bigger, my mom ran to the kitchen and grabbed a big dish
from the sink full of dirty turkey day food, filled it with water, and ran into
the living room and threw it onto the growing flame. To my shock and my
moms horror, the greasy water made the fire explode in front of our eyes and
triple in height taking the cinnamon twig brooms with it as it crawled up the
fireplace making the 20 foot ceiling seem all of a sudden very short. It was at about this point when the greasy, oil ridden turkey water, was thrust
into the flames setting the fire alarms off that we heard my fathers groggy, sleepy voice, coming thought the kitchen saying, “What the hell is going
on?”. It didn’t take but a few
more steps for him to enter the living room and that voice turn to a very awake
“God damn it! What the hell?” Before we could answer he turns to me and says, “Elyse, call the fire
department, NOW.”
This was my moment to show I am not the
ditzy flighty girl many think. This was my moment to show I can be counted on
in an emergency and I can help save the day. However, the only thought in my
mind was, “What is the number?” I was desperately trying to think if I
learned this number in kindergarten when I first learned about safety. And
nothing came to mind. It was blank. Nada. Nothing. Did the fire department have
a separate number like the police department and if so what on earth was
it? So I ran to the phone book and
began flipping through the pages when my Dad shouted, “What the hell are you
doing!?” and I responded, “looking up the fire department’s number”. At this point my mom took over and came
running over, grabbed the phone out of my hand as she shouted “911” and my dad
rolled his eyes as he ran out the living room French doors to the patio and
pulled in the hose and attempted to put out what was now the biggest fire I had
ever seen. The only thing I could do was stand and stare with my mouth and
eyes wide open in shock. I was gawking as my mother spoke to the fire department and
my dad began to put the fire out. Dialing 911 just never crossed my mind.
A few minutes later the fire department
came and finished cooling the fire and getting the smoke out of the house. Our
house was fine. There was no major damage, thank god for the huge ceilings and
granite fireplace. But by the next morning I was already being quizzed and
tortured about who to call in an emergency, including a fire! And just in case
you are wondering it is 911… hmmmm is it 911 in England??
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