That night, almost everything I had left behind, certain I would get it as soon as I had the space for it, was destroyed. Many of my mother’s things – whatever I had managed to carry out of my childhood home shortly after she died, when I moved into independent living through Child and Family Services. It wasn’t a lot; a few small boxes of her clothes, a couple shirts I knew she had worn that hadn’t been laundered. They smelled of her, though after so many years, the fragrance was faint; I’m not sure if it wasn’t just my memory of her perfume.

Gone was my sister’s wedding dress, my bike, years of university books (but then who knows what to do with those anyway), everything in the kitchen, all the tools in the basement, everything seasonal. 

The phone rang in the middle of the night. Middle of the night calls were reserved for emergencies with my family overseas, when the time difference didn’t matter because someone has passed away.  

“This is the Winnipeg Police. I’m sorry to wake you. There was a fire at your home.”

“Is everyone okay?

“Yes, no one was home.”

“Is it okay?”

“No, I’m sorry, it’s gone.”

I don’t remember what the officer said after. I think he told me there was no reason to come now; I should arrive in the morning to meet with the insurance adjuster. It was around three a.m., sleepless, I called home to Poland. My grandmother answered and hearing my voice, she immediately asked what was wrong. She knew it was night for me; her heart like mine was living in two time zones. We were always counting back or counting forward seven hours.  

It was early December, dark and freezing cold. Waking to nurse my six month old son every two hours meant my nights were long and I was often delirious. The call from the police felt surreal. The call to my grandmother, telling her the house burned down felt surreal. Nothing made sense in my exhaustion.

I hadn’t lived in my home for a year and a half when it burned down. It was rented to a group of students for the first year, fully furnished, while I studied on a scholarship in France. When I had to return early from school, because my pregnancy was getting complicated, I stayed with my partner’s family. I would have been happy to give birth in Bordeaux, but my student insurance plan only applied to me, anything the baby needed the moment it was born wouldn’t have been covered. The doctor said it made sense to go home to Canada, so I did.

But returning pregnant, tired, incomeless, meant I couldn’t afford to live in my home. I also didn’t want to break the renters’ lease. It was fortunate my partner’s family home was big enough for all of us. It was also wonderful to be under my mother-in-law’s care; she loved me so much and was over the moon to welcome her first grandchild. I was equally happy to have her help; I didn’t know what to do with a baby, not the first one. When the lease ended, the students moved out, and luckily friends of ours offered to move in. They were excited to live in the heart of the “village”; I was thankful my home was in the hands of people I knew and that they were okay with me storing my stuff in the attic and basement. They didn’t need the space.

It made complete sense too, after the baby was born, to stay put where there was so much enthusiastic help and plenty of eager arms to hold him. It meant I could return to university that fall. Most nights if I pumped breast milk he could last the three hour long class without me. If no one could watch him, all of my professors had agreed for him to come with me. He slept through so many classes. It was a tough slog, but having finished my business degree while in France, I could now focus on my English major and creative writing. Now, finally, I was studying what I wanted to study.

Within fifteen minutes my home was ablaze. The baby was six months old. The seven year long relationship he was born into had ended. Besides my child tax credit, I still had no income. Everything I was left with fit into half a dozen boxes; photos albums, documents, my most valued treasures, odds and ends.

For a very long time I couldn’t actually remember everything I had left in the house; it felt impossible to prepare an inventory. Plus no one wanted the inventory; little did I know, renting the house nullified the “contents” portion of my house insurance. Nothing that was inside would be replaced. Thankfully, that night I didn’t know any of this.

I didn’t go back to sleep. I waited for sunrise then drove to see the wreckage.

From across the street, it was beautifully tragic. It was almost -30c overnight; the fire department had put out the fire, spraying the trees, bushes, everything that surrounded the house. In that frigid night air, my home had become an ice castle.   

Firefighters remained on site, speaking with the insurance broker who had arrived before me. Had it been warmer there might have been a curious crowd, but so early on a Sunday morning, in the freezing cold, I stood there alone. I cried.

A couple firefighters walked over and asked if I was the owner. I said yes.

“Is everything gone?”

“Yes, if it didn’t burn, it’s got smoke or water damage, it’s all gone.”

“Is it safe to enter, could I try to go in, I want to look for something?”

“You can’t go in.”

I began to weep. “But maybe through the basement door, in the back…?”

“What’s there?” one of them asked, gently.

“My mother’s…. if you could please, if it’s safe, it’s not far in.”

“Down the back steps, there are only maybe six of them, through the second back door, if you turn right immediately, then right again, on the floor there will be a blue bin. My Christmas ornaments are there, my mother’s…..”

“We will try.” They walked away and disappeared behind the house. I waited. Only minutes later, he was walking across the road with that bin in his hands.

“Is this it?” His smile was enormous; my smile mirrored his.

“It is.” I took the bin and set in on the ground. Lifting the lid, amongst tinsel, glass ornaments, there they were. Three tiny, metal angels. A gift my mother received from a German woman living in the village near our refugee camp. Fifteen years earlier. They were friends, the two women, although my mother didn’t speak much German, their fondness for each other was expressed through warm smiles, small gestures, shared tea, and sitting on a bench chitchatting as their kids played. Not everyone in the village made friends with the foreigners living in the camp at the foot of the hill. But some did, some were so kind, generous. Maybe they understood our plight and displacement; so they brought us into the fold of their lives, even if just for a time.

Years later my mother, every Christmas, when the tiny metal angels would be brought out, for the longest time the most delicate decorations we had, my mother would tell us about her friend and how much it meant to her that they had known each other. My mother loved those angels, I loved those angels. 

“I’m not promising anything, what would we be looking for?”

The fire had not reached the back basement corner, the stone foundation didn’t catch, everything was trapped in ice, but not that bin. They had rescued for me the most precious thing in my home.

The firefighter and I embraced, he wished me well, and said that in his many, many years of service, salvaging something from a total loss fire was rare.

Within a day the insurance adjuster told me the house would be torn down, it wasn’t safe to remain standing. Months later, I would learn that it wouldn’t be rebuilt either, I was inadequately insured. No contents insurance, no full replacement cost insurance. A year after the fire, the payout was enough to cover the mortgage, my outstanding credit line balance (used to repair the house), and the money I owed my grandmother for the down payment. 

For the next week, as the temperature hovered around -20c, I would come and watch the bulldozers tear it down wall by wall, load trucks full of rubble, and drive it away.

Before they were done completely, I came with my sister on the weekend, free to step onto the work site. There, trapped under the bulldozer claw, frozen, soiled, were my mother’s faux fur, my sister’s wedding dress. My mother loved that fur; she loved it because it wasn’t real and because she felt fancy in it. It was her going to church fur.

Try as I might, I couldn’t pull them out, sitting on the ground and using all my strength, cursing, crying, screaming at the damn earth that wouldn’t give them back to me. I don’t think I was struggling for the things, I was struggling to hold onto a life I had before she was gone, before everything went to shit. My sister picked me up; she said it was okay, what was I going to do with that stuff anyway?

We started walking away when I noticed a kitchen drawer. There it was, laying on the bricks, with all the contents inside, trapped in ice. Water must have flown into the drawer, and then it froze like a tray of silver. I grabbed the drawer by the handle and went home.

So, at the end of it all, that Christmas, I had my clothes, my most important personal belongings, my ornaments, and my cutlery drawer. As it thawed in a bathtub the smoke smell emerged. The drawer itself had to be thrown out, but the utensils were okay. I didn’t keep them all, but today still, I have the grater. The kind with big holes for grading cheese. I think I may keep it for life.

The following spring I heard on the news about a house fire in St. Boniface. A Captain died in that fire, not long before he was going to retire. That Captain was the same man who brought me the bin. I saw his face on the news, his smile, and I cried again. He had given me back a piece of my life with my mother; I was forever indebted to him.

It took me years to replace the bike I lost that night. Only two winters ago I finally bought ice skates; I couldn’t bring myself to replace the ones that were lost for a long time, as though I had forfeited the right to skate. I hadn’t been on ice for nearly a decade; ice, winter, early December; it was all so heavy for me.

There are still things I haven’t replaced.