{"id":163458,"date":"2026-01-25T07:20:30","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T12:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/?p=163458"},"modified":"2026-01-25T07:22:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T12:22:00","slug":"what-to-save-from-a-fire-nothing-to-steal-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/?p=163458","title":{"rendered":"What to Save from a Fire (Nothing to Steal Here)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last January fires devastated communities in the Los Angeles area. My daughter Molly lives five blocks from where the recommended evacuation area was. Besides the threat of flames, toxic smoke hung heavy in her neighborhood. Molly and her roommate fled to a friend\u2019s apartment in a safer part of the city. In tears, she described how tormented she was having to choose a few possessions to save from potential loss. She took things that had been her late father\u2019s: jackets from movies he\u2019d worked on like the blue satiny Superman bomber with his name embroidered over the heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I barely remember feeling that sense of preciousness about things. I\u2019m at the stage of life when caring about objects fades daily. And yet, I\u2019ve never had so many possessions. Don\u2019t get me wrong \u2013 I would hate to lose my house and what is in it but where I am ultimately headed, there’s nothing I can take. This is my time for downsizing and I\u2019m not being great at that. It is mostly my laziness that prevents me from purging, whittling down my life to lessen the future clean out for my daughter.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But it\u2019s also my awareness that my daughter wants to hang onto things. I recently mentioned to her that I was exasperated with my younger self for shipping two large sculptures from Japan that I\u2019d carved. They are too heavy for me to lift alone. Titled \u2018Relic\u2019 and \u2018Seed\u2019, they sit \u2013 giant dust collectors in the corner of my living room, barely visible behind the television and plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey are my inheritance,\u201d Molly says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her future headache, I think. Even if I could move them, I would not bother to save my well traveled sculptures from the threat of flames. In fact, perhaps that\u2019s what I should do with them. I\u2019m sure this well seasoned camphor wood from Kyoto would burn nicely in my wood stove. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Letting go of possessions can be difficult for some of us. When I was in my late twenties to early thirties, I rented a room in a house by the beach in Connecticut. I escaped from the city on weekends to my sweet space on the third floor. The house was owned by Tom who became a beloved friend. He was in his 80s by the time I moved into his rambling home overflowing with a lifetime of memories. Many of the rooms of the house were unusable because they were so full of things. There were boxes and boxes of Tom\u2019s belongings, his deceased mother\u2019s and other long-gone family. The 5 or so of us who lived there as \u2018roomers\u2019 had clear spaces. Almost in reaction to Tom, our rooms were sparsely furnished and neat. The kitchen too, was always clean and organized although Tom was known to eat expired sandwich meat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all became friends and regularly gathered in the cluttered but manageable front room for cocktail hour with Tom as our generous host. He\u2019d offer drinks to all, make himself a martini and always had plenty of Molson\u2019s and wine on hand. We\u2019d find space on the couch and other perches around the room, filling it with laughter. Sometimes Tom would crank up the player-piano from the adjoining living room – too full of boxes and treasures to sit in. Living there was casual and easy, the evenings of warmth and friendship sustained us as did Tom\u2019s love. We became an oddball little family and barely noticed the clutter around us. His home was an oasis. I loved it there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While not as much as Tom, I have my own lifetime of stuff – the value of which is primarily sentimental. A thief who looked in my window would pass on making the effort to break in. No fancy sound system, jewels or likely valuables in this house, they might easily assess. Only memories. Nothing to steal here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Last January fires devastated communities in the Los Angeles area. My daughter Molly lives five blocks from where the recommended evacuation area was. Besides the threat of flames, toxic smoke hung heavy in her neighborhood. Molly and her roommate fled to a friend\u2019s apartment in a safer part of the city. In tears, she described … Continue reading What to Save from a Fire (Nothing to Steal Here)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[48,371,372],"class_list":["post-163458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seasonal-musings","tag-aging","tag-fire","tag-purging"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPzTS-Gwq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163458"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163463,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163458\/revisions\/163463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}