Let’s rewind a couple of years to that garage fire I mentioned in this column a few months ago.

It was Christmas night. We came home from my parents’ house around 9 p.m. and tucked the children into bed. When all was quiet, Brad and I fell asleep, Christmas memories on our minds.

At about 1:30 a.m., the smoke detector alarm woke us. While Brad investigated and called 911, I dashed around waking children and hurrying them out. On the far side of the house I reached my brother, who was living with us at the time. Everyone was safe.

It was then that Brad remembered our puppy. She was in the mudroom, which sat between the garage (where the smoke was coming from) and the kitchen. Holding his breath, Brad dashed in, yanked her out of her cage, and brought her outside. The puppy was limp, but after a few desperate moments of stimulating and breathing into her mouth, she started breathing. We were so thankful!

We jumped into our truck, which, fortunately, hadn’t been in the garage, and Brad pulled it far enough away that we could see the house and not be in danger. While waiting for the fire department to arrive, he and my brother continued to try to find the cause. The fuel tanks were fine, the woodstove was OK, and the chimney looked normal. Was it the car? The freezers?

Somehow it felt like forever and also just 3 seconds until the fire trucks arrived. Watching smoke infiltrate your house is awful. We hadn’t yet seen flames, but still, sitting there calming the children, holding a smoky puppy, and shaking in my bathrobe, all I could think about was how it might just all crumble before our eyes. I prayed, dear Lord, please keep it standing.

Thankfully, the garage and house stood. The firefighters (one was a woman who, it turned out, that I knew, and what a hug that was!) ran in, turned the electric off, made sure we had gotten everyone out and then busted into the garage. As soon as there was oxygen introduced, the flames billowed, but they got the hoses in there and it wasn’t long before the garage was just a smoldering, wet mess.

Once things calmed down, I took the children down the road to Brad’s parents’ house where we tried to catch a few winks in our sooty pajamas (impossible).

The next morning’s sunrise was extra spectacular in my eyes. We were all breathing and had a warm place to crash when our own home was unsafe.

There was a lot of walking around the house and assessing the damages that day. It was concluded that the fire was electrical and started in a corner where two deep freezers were.

My parents helped us clean out the freezers, throwing away food we had stored up a few months before and saving what we could. It was amazing how much was still frozen in the bottoms of those charred freezers. Most fruits and vegetables weren’t good since they were just in plastic bags that smoke had gotten into, but the vacuum-sealed meat was still OK. We were still using sooty meat about a year later and each time I pulled a pack of it out, that horrid smell took me back to that night.

I never thought about how smoke and soot could be so invasive. Even though flames never made it past the mudroom, the whole house was disgusting. Every nook and cranny was gray and filthy.

One room was soot-free, though. The sewing room doors were closed and there is a big spiral staircase just outside of it so we think the smoke and soot got drawn up to the third floor before it had a chance to sneak in to the room. So, it wasn’t long before I was back to quilting. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and I was able to make masks. I was so grateful to have that familiar space to come to and work in while everything else was so chaotic around us.

We lived with Brad’s parents until mid-May while the house got fixed up. It was so wonderful to live with family right down the road. His mom and I shared cooking duties and their dining room became our office and catch-all room. In general, we turned their lives upside down, but they were so gracious about it the whole time.

My dad and brother fixed up our house. It took lots of painting and even some remodeling. Since we were forced out anyway, it seemed like a good time to insulate the walls, since our house is old and was just a few layers of brick.

They also rearranged some upstairs rooms to put in a hallway so we no longer have to walk through bedrooms to get to other rooms. These were projects we’d talked about doing, but never got around to because living in construction isn’t fun. Well, as it turned out, we didn’t have to live in it and what a wonderful silver lining to an otherwise challenging time.

Writing this all down brings the tears to my eyes again. It was a difficult experience, but the Lord sent help and gave us strength and we’re here today to give Him the glory!

It stormed overnight, and it’s wet and drizzly outside. I’m not tempted to get out in the garden, so I stay in bed and read. It’s a book about…

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Zoë Rohrer is a third-generation dairy farmer’s wife from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

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