Material things were never the priority in my thoughts when I suffered the horrible fire in January, but a lot of people don’t know that I have been surviving fires since I was a child and the one that killed my five precious dogs was the SIXTH one of my life. Eight years ago my family home was destroyed by fire.

The tapestry that was extremely similar to the one Shea is holding here was “lost” even though the other tapestry below was professionally cleaned and was returned to me. When I started looking for the Filipino-themed tapestry that survived the 2016 fire, coincidentally this “Aladdin-themed” one (as my parents described it) came up first. You can see that the blue-er version of the Filipino traditional dance tapestry hung in my home before the January fire that burned up 99% of my belongings. I almost gave up my search, but my amazing friend Patrick Sheehan (who I used to swoon over when I would see him on the subway when we commuted to work in New York City years ago) found it online within a few seconds when I asked him about it.

Similarly, he did the same thing for a hand-carved dresser that is currently en route from Warsaw, but that’s another long story I’ll post about when it arrives.

Now I will end up with BOTH tapestries replaced even though this first one wasn’t in my life these past eight years. This is very healing and helps me cope with the bit of family nostalgia, even though they are just close facsimiles to the ones I grew up with.

This carpet is similar to the one that never got cleaned after Mom’s fire in 2016. My parents bought a very similar one with the reddish part a more blue color in the 1970s when we lived in Spain. I was upset that the original was not professionally cleaned after Mom’s fire, so I assume they stole it since nothing in the main part of my mom’s house was incinerated (only the garage).

I did notice that the blue and red versions of the Filipino tapestry are reflections of each other. That is NOT the case with the “Aladdin” one.

This carpet was bought at the same time and WAS professionally cleaned after my mom’s fire in 2016. Unfortunately, I lost it in MY fire in January 2024.

So, I also ordered another that an art expert friend found online for me, so this is what it will look like:

Shea and I brought a few things back from the ruins of my garden which we tended to a bit yesterday. I had a sudden inspiration to try to resurrect a few more items. I think I can bring this plant back to life, and some of these other items can simply be washed, including this vase from Spain that my family had since the mid-1970’s. I’ll always be able to point to these items (among the less than 1% of things that I used to have) and say that they were among the few things that I had in the “before time.”

Clippings from this plant, which is more of an indoor plant that I had in a covered patio area, have been propagated by me several times, so it will be a big win if I can resurrect it from the dead when it’s been subject to the fire and exposed to the outside for over eight months. Some of the clippings were in my home office that perished.