First on Scene

“Look what I found,” my husband, Theo, says with a sheepish grin as he slides a red notebook across the kitchen counter.   

“What’s that?” Our five-year-old son, Julian, points at the notebook, decorated with firetrucks and glimmering hearts.    

“A scrapbook.”

When I look at Theo, his light brown eyes twinkle the same way they did twenty years ago when we first met. A spark that says the fun is just getting started. I mirror his sheepish grin, remembering we bought matching red scrapbooks the summer we officially became a couple. Mine lies buried in a keepsake box. Somewhere.

I turn the cover and smile at my husband’s tiny, scratchy handwriting. We’ve lived through war, natural disasters, deaths of loved ones, mental illness, first jobs, first homes, marriage, childbirth; a pandemic — yet, some things don’t change. 

The scrapbook begins with a single photograph from our first date. Above, faceted heart stickers float around a line written in red pen that reads: “The bug bites June 9, 2002.” 

The picture is of a house on fire.

The house isn’t visible. If I’m being objective, the picture shows massive flames burning in the shape of a lopsided heart. Otherwise, the glossy 4x6 is entirely black, the picture having been taken at night without the flash setting. Besides the fire, the silhouettes of a single, ornamental tree and a firefighter heading into the blaze, the reflective stripes on his gear glowing in the dark are all we see.

I took that photograph from across the street at 1:37 a.m. on June 9, 2002.

And on this balmy summer evening nineteen years later, I remember how I came to be photographing a structure fire on my first date with Theo.

The year is 2002. 

A Baby Boomer Republican is president (on the heels of a Baby Boomer Democrat). Mere months have passed since September 11th changed our world irrevocably. We live in a world at war. Fellow students march and prepare for deployment; others pitch tents on the campus green in peaceful protest. Some join the fire service; others write poetry. Yet, nearly everyone pins a flag on their dorm room’s door. Feelings of togetherness and foreboding pervade the air. Our future is uncertain. We carry the burden our leaders place on our shoulders — the shoulders of their children, their people’s children. We know whatever comes next, our generation will pay the ultimate price. 

So, how do we cope? 

We are young; we revel in the moment, grasping each fleeting one as if it holds the secret to immortality. We laugh when these moments slip through our fingers. Simple nights with friends are called “epic” though they may have only been spent playing beer pong in a parking lot, in a dorm room, in the woods.     

In this atmosphere, it’s not at all strange for a poet and a firefighter who (on the surface) have very little in common end up in love. For now, Theo and I are friends.

We study. We party. We watch MTV’s Jackass. 

Out of all the girls Theo knows, I reckon he has a soft spot for me when he invites me to Jackass nights in his dorm room. Invitations are exclusive. He doesn’t invite many other girls. Maybe he invites me because I don’t eat much pizza. There are two reasons for this: I’m a small woman, and it’s hard to have an appetite while watching a show where young men do things to purposefully make themselves vomit. 

Maybe he invites me because of my sense of humor. Growing up, my brothers and their friends always grossed me out and made me laugh at the same time. While most of the show is gross, some of it is downright funny — BMX jousting, antiquing, Johnny Knoxville’s laugh — I genuinely appreciate that. 

Maybe he invites me because he likes me. 

Whatever the reason, Theo’s laugh and mine hook up before we do. We laugh at the same things. With a hearty, outdoorsy quality, his laugh fills the room, includes everyone like a group hug, and lights up his eyes, already sparkling with fun and happiness. Everyone wants to be around him. Me increasingly so, and without even realizing it. 

“We’re just friends!” I declare to everyone who makes innuendoes about us: our floormates, my mom, our dorm’s custodian.  

We’re just friends. Until we’re more than that. 

This night in June is far from the first time we hang out, but it is our first date. Not an on-campus pick of which dining hall to eat at followed by a quick make-out session in whoever’s dorm room happens to be roommate-free. 

He’s taking me to Providence for dinner at Unos. Most likely, I wear a tank top and boot-cut jeans with stars embroidered on the back pockets, long, flat-ironed hair, and over-plucked eyebrows. Usually, Theo wore a firefighter t-shirt with a Maltese cross over his heart and cargo shorts. But for our first date, I see him in a collared rugby shirt. I like that he doesn’t pop the collar. We both think that’s uncool. 

His car, like his dorm room, is clean with nothing out of place. No trash. The floor has spotless floor mats; the car is shiny. On deck, he has a CD player and stereo he installed himself, not thinking the stock one was good enough. I imagine we listen to Sublime, or maybe we talk about everything and nothing. 

We drive forward into the night, amidst the turbulence of our times, knowing without knowing the chaos of life will catch us one day. In two short years, my dad will be denied retirement from the Air Force and deployed to Iraq; Theo’s dad will be diagnosed with cancer. We will carry life’s chaos together, reminding each other that no matter how serious things get, people still fart and it’s funny. We have too little time for anger, for hate. 

For now, we laugh. The moments blend into that sound — dinner, the mall, the bridge, it doesn’t matter where we are — place doesn’t register much. Later, we return in the same vein, still wide awake, still thinking the night is ours. Still, just getting started.

But no sooner does Theo park his car in his parent’s garage when a call comes through on his pager. A house down the street is on fire.

“Want to come?” Theo looks at me, eyes glinting with excitement.

“What?”

“Yeah, come. You can take pictures.” He tosses me his camera, and with his gear already in the trunk, we jump back in the car and drive down the street to his neighbor’s house, their attached garage engulfed in flames. 

First on scene, he gears up and heads to the house while the flashing trucks arrive. Pacing the sidewalk across the street, I take pictures of my new boyfriend running into a fire on our first date. At twenty years old, I am always up for an adventure, but this is unexpected. Theo and another firefighter wield a hose, entering the house through the front door after wiping their feet. While they push the fire back, fighting to contain the flames to the garage, I take more pictures. I pace. What am I thinking? Probably something like this:

Is he ok? I hope he’s ok. Do I love this guy? Crap, who falls in love on the first date? This is like a scene from a movie! Who runs into a fire on a first date? But he is a firefighter after all. Volunteer though. Maybe he was getting bored on our date. But his neighbor’s house is on fire. What firefighter ignores that? How cute does he look in his gear? Wow. 

Other people join me on the sidewalk, wrapping cardigans tightly around themselves though the night is warm. 

Then — boom. 

The sound of an explosion from the garage cannons through my chest like one of those filler fireworks that bursts and leaves nothing but a puff of sparkle dust in the sky. My heart stops.

All I can do is wait.

After what feels like an eternity, the fire ends. People clap. They saved the house and not a single person got hurt. Years later, Theo will tell me that everything in the garage was on fire, including the two cars. It probably was one of the car’s gas tanks that exploded. He will chuckle, describing how he and the other firefighter hit the deck. 

But right now, all I know is my thumping heart and the black smoke billowing from the house. On tiptoes, I look through the small crowd for Theo.

Then, against the backdrop of house and flashing trucks and crowd of firefighters and civilians, Theo emerges from the smoke, walks across the street and takes off his helmet. Sweat plasters his hair, and soot stains his face. His eyes are glowing and so is his smile. I think I want this guy; I want this guy so bad. He’s smelly, smoky, sooty, and hot as hell. He must have read my mind, because without missing a beat, without saying a word, he sweeps me in his arms and kisses me.

That night, he may have put out a fire, but he lit another one — still burning. 

After a couple of pages dedicated to the fire, Julian turns to a blank page, and then another, still another. 

 “How come you didn’t fill in the other pages, Daddy?”

“Yeah, Daddy,” I say, giving Theo a teasing look. “Why didn’t you finish the scrapbook?”

And there it is, that sparkle in his eye. I know what comes next will shut me up with a goofy grin for the rest of the day. I should know better than to tease him. Theo shrugs.

“I didn’t finish the scrapbook because I realized our story doesn’t end.”

Epic.

-Maria Ostrowski

Maria Ostrowski’s creative nonfiction and poetry appears in the anthologies, (HER)oics: Women’s lived experiences during the coronavirus pandemic and Letting Go: An Anthology of Attempts, 34th Parallel Magazine, The Book Smuggler’s Den, and forthcoming in Poetica Review. In 2019, her novel manuscript, Yet From Those Flames No Light, was a finalist for the Daphne du Maurier Award for excellence in mystery and suspense. A toddler mom, who enjoys finger-painting almost as much as her son, Maria lives in Connecticut with a husband who patiently accepts the chaos of a household run by a writer. Follow her writing life on Instagram: @the_roughdraft.