This Week’s Question: If your house was on fire and you could only grab 3 things before leaving, what would they be? (Other than family or pets.)
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Well, fortunately I have a cat flap so hopefully Fudge and Marmite could save themselves, phew. So what would I take? I had to stop and really think about this. Having lived in/worked in/visited nearly 50 nations, I have spent a lot of my adult life with a 70li rucksack and a guitar and that’s it; minimalist doesn’t really even come close. It is only during the past decade, since living in Nice and owning an apartment, that I have accumulated a few things, but, for example, I possess very few things from my childhood/young adulthood. But here goes:
1. My passport (well maybe all the passports, as all those stamps hold memories for me). I mean, I don’t know where I would go if my place burnt down.
2. Like many, I guess, my MacBook with all its manuscripts, drafts and photos.
3. I think maybe my documents: birth certificate, degree diplomas etc.. having already lost these once in my travels, I know the pain of trying to replace them.
What about you? What three things would you grab on the way out the door?
In my 20's, with only my guitar and a rucksack, I wandered the continents, immersing myself in the lives of some wonderful people, projects and stories, which changed the way I view my responsibility to others and this earth. Right now I'm a European transplant in the US who writes books for children and young adults. Stories can help us not only navigate our world but can connect us to others, and allow us to inspire and help each other. I believe that equity and empathy should be at the core of our all actions, words, and stories.
I am also a school librarian and I get a kick out of book-matchmaking! And I use the pronouns she/her.
Whoa! I had to stop and think for a moment….. Let me see…. Well as my documents, Birth Cert, Marriage Licence and passports are all in one place. They would be gathered all in one swoop.
2nd I would grab our Wedding album, I could not leave without that, it is very precious to me.
3rd Would have to be my manuscript drafts and photos, for we have built quite a collection of photos over the years of our travels, and made many friends from different countries, who mean a great deal to us, I could not go without those…. and of course I would grab our family wedding photos off the wall as I went past.
Yep that about does it. I would be happy if I had those.
Hi Diane, I too thought about all my photo albums, but they are stored all over the apartment and are pretty bulky….. but, like you, they would be so sorely missed. I can picture you whisking the wedding photo off the wall as you ran past đ
Oh gosh. This is a hard one. Even with all the sorting and clearing that I’ve been doing in the past months, there are still many “things” that mean a great deal to me… autographed books, letters, photos, sheet music that belonged to my mother and grandparents… but they’re just “things”, aren’t they?
My purse (that would take care of most documents).
My MacBook (manuscripts)
Oh my, the third one. This is making me tear up — I need to get a small, easily grabbed box/container that can hold a couple of pictures of my parents, Dad’s “autobiography” of his Air Force years, a piece of paper with some words of encouragement that Mum wrote down once — those are irreplaceable.
It actually got me thinking, Beth, that I could easily put together a small box of those really precious, sentimental items, just in case. You also reminded me of something I had completely forgotten; my dad also wrote an unpublished memoir, of his long distance hitchhiking travels. I must ask him if I can take a look at it again. I haven’t read it since my teens, when I used it somewhat manipulatively to persuade my parents to let me hitch round Europe with my boyfriend after graduating from high school.
Do you still have a lot more clearing out to do, Beth?
In answer to your question, I’ve done the first pass of clearing and now I need to do a more thorough look through all the papers (Mum’s, Dad’s, my uncle’s and my own!) and file that which needs to be kept and get rid of that which doesn’t need to be kept. There’s a lot of putting away to do yet — the project has become an “entire apartment” project. By the end of May, I hope to have things pretty much in hand. It’s quite a task!
Think I would grab photo albums, important documents, and my purse because it has important info inside. Everything else is stuff. But, it does make you think. I had “bomb threat” exercises (some real) all the time at work, and I always knew where my purse was, because it had my keys to my car I could escape, if need be. Funny how we think.