I was in the 3rd grade and we had just got out for Christmas break. It was 3 days till Christmas and we were all so excited for Christmas day. I was most excited because this was the first year I bought a Christmas present from somebody else. Every other year I would just make a present at school for a project and gave it to my mom and dad on Christmas day (to be honest if it wasn’t for the projects, I probably wouldn’t have given anybody anything for Christmas).

A couple of days before, my aunt took me out to buy something for mom and dad for Christmas and I could work it off later by helping clean her house. She took me to Kohl’s to find mom a new outfit. We got her some jeans with a blue striped shirt.

After we checked out, we sat in the parking lot for 5 minutes thinking of what to get dad for Christmas. It was hard because anything he needed he bought himself and he was always quite about what he wanted so we decided to get him a tool because he was a carpenter and all of his tools are old and worn. We got him a multi tool that had 12 different tools on it.

2 days before Christmas, the heater went out and we couldn’t get it fixed until a week after Christmas. With an old poorly insulated house and below freezing weather, there is no way we would hold out until then so, my dad set up 5 space heaters around the house so we could stay warm.

4 days later, Christmas was over but we still had 1 more place to go to for Christmas. It was my grandparents’ house. The reason we had to wait a few days is because she lived over an hour way. We lived in Grand Prairie and they lived in lone oak. I loved their house because they lived out in the country. I could shoot gun, drive the golf cart, fish and all that kind of stuff.

Before we left the house to go over there, my dad set up the space heaters and put them on low so when they came home, they could come home to a warm house. When we got there, we opened our presents and talked for a while. Before we knew it, it was 1 AM and my parents still had to drive home. Both of them complained of being tired so my grandma had offered for them to stay the night. After a couple of minutes of talking about it, they said yes and went to sleep in the room I would have been in and I went to sleep on the couch in the living room.

We all went to sleep a couple of minutes later but around 3 or 4 AM, Mom and Dad woke me up and told me to tell my grandma to call them when we got up. When Dad told me that, he had a huge fake smile on but Mom didn’t look at me at all as if she was hiding something.

When we all got up, my grandparents asked if I knew where they had gone. I told them that I didn’t know but Dad told me to tell you that you need to call them. She said ok and went outside to call Mom. When she did, she called my grandpa to come outside and told us to stay inside for a minute. When they came inside, they both had the same smile on their face a Dad did the night before. I had asked them where Mom and Dad had gone and my grandma replied with a shaky voice saying “they had to help out pepa (my other grandpa) with fixing something”. That seem reasonable because my dad has had to do that before for his AC before so I said ok and kept on doing what I was I was doing.

The next day, I had to go home so we loaded up the car and went out. It took us a while to load up because we had to load up 3 days’ worth of clothes, 3 toy guns, and 1 BB gun in the trunk and had a man on the larger side in one side, a smaller woman in the driver’s seat, and an 8 year old in the middle of a mustang. That was a tight fit.

On our way there my grandma told me that when we get there, the house is going to look a little different that when you left t. I asked what she meant and she said “the other night when you parents left in the middle of the night, they had to go because they got a call from the fire marshal and he told them that the house had caught on fire and they need to come home right away.” I didn’t believe her at first. I thought it was a joke.

When we got there, the house looked fine so I continued thinking it was a joke. Then my mom came out and said hey. My grandma pulled her aside and told her that she had already told me the news. My mom look upset when she said that but immediately disregarded it and went to me and asked me how I was holding up and I said fine. I asked if I could go inside and play with my new toys. She look confused and asked my grandma if she told me about it to confirm and she said yes. I then realized something. That the “joke” that my grandma had told me before might be true. So, I asked my mom if it was. She told me it was and that if I wanted to go inside I could.

I went inside and was bombarded by the smell of burnt rubber and sought. When the smell became slightly bearable, I opened my eyes and saw nothing but black all over and broke out crying on the floor. It was too much for me to handle. We lost almost everything in one night. We only had a few pieces of furniture survive. All of the Christmas presents we had got were all destroyed. We had to move out to Arlington for a couple of years while my dad was rebuilding it.

It did take long to find a house because my uncle was in real estate and rented us a house for cheap. When the break was over and we had to go back to school, I was going to a school in Grand Prairie and living in Arlington. That was about a 20 minuets drive without morning traffic. I was late every day for the next 2 week. After 2 week, my mom enrolled me in an elementary school in Arlington called Moore elementary. I went there till the end of my 4th grade year which was about 1 ½ years later.

 While living in Arlington, my dad was working on rebuilding the house. It took him about 2 years to finish. He finished about half way through summer. Arlington is also the place where I met my best friend that I still talk today named Artem. He went to the same school as I did and we would always hang out after school and play his X- Box on the weekends. 

Even though this fire was over 7 years ago, it still affects our family. Now my mom is terrified of fire anywhere near the house. It doesn’t matter if it is in a fire place or not. She will not have it. But make this a lesson to you. Always love what you have because you never know when you might lose it.