In the early hours of Saturday, August 24, 1996, our youngest daughter Kate was faced with a choice. The knowledge of her choice and her decision brought great joy to her entire family.
The temperature was an oppressively hot 105 degrees the previous day. David and I left early that Friday morning to vacation in Northern California at our favorite campsite, Redwood Trails RV Park. Kate had a summer job and elected to stay home. After work she went grocery shopping with a friend. She really wanted to make a batch of brownies, but decided to wait until 11PM because the house seemed unusually warm. She baked the brownies, turned the oven off and left the brownies cooling on the oven rack. Her friend had gone home when she prepared to settle in for the night. She had a very tiring day at work and thought she might sleep better if she took a sleeping tablet.
She decided to settle in her brother Tom’s room, located at the front of the house. Tom and his future wife Alayne were about half way through a fourteen-month bicycle tour of Europe and Africa. Kate thought perhaps his room might be cooler than her bedroom, located in the middle of the house.
She crawled into Tom’s waterbed and tried to drift off to sleep. The heat still seemed suffocating to her. Should she try to lay still and wait for sleep to come? Would the heat envelope her and keep her awake? She thought to herself: “What if the house caught on fire? I took that sleeping pill. What if I fall asleep and can’t wake up if flames start crackling in the walls? I’m alone here in the house.”
Finally, unable to sleep or overcome her anxieties, she climbed out of bed, went to the phone and called a friend. It was one o’clock in the morning. “I can’t sleep here tonight; it’s too hot. Can you come and pick me up?” Her friend arrived shortly and she was relieved to get out of the hot house.
The next morning Kate got a call from her sister, Kelly. “Are you OK? Dad and Mom’s house burned down last night. I was so scared when I got here this morning that you were still in the house. I yelled at the firemen that they needed to look for you. I knew you were home at 10pm last night when I talked to you on the phone, so of course I assumed you were still here. When the firemen had no luck finding you, I started calling your friends. How did you get there?”
Kate told Kelly of her premonition about a possible fire and her decision to leave the house. A life saving decision! The house was gone, but that seemed very insignificant. The family was intact and that was so much more important. We felt extremely lucky and were most grateful for the fateful decision Kate had made.
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