Recently my husband called on his way home from work..  As soon as he said  "A house is burning down on Pritchard Farm!" my brain switched into some other mode.  My thoughts immediately rushed to my gear:  Do I have an empty card?  What type of lens do I need?  Should I bring a prime?  How fast can I get there?

The kids were home from school so I bustled them out the door and as soon as we got outside we could see the smoke billowing across the sky and we headed in that direction.  So did, apparently, everyone in East St. Paul.   When we arrived it looked more like a mid-afternoon street party than a tragedy.

The kids were in the backseat, possibly as excited as I was and as I tried to park the car, the questions began.

"Why is their house on fire?"

"I don't know."

"Do any kids live there?"

"I don't know."

"What happens to their stuff?"

I thought about that for a moment.  I thought that it was almost the end of the working day, and the home owners were likely on their way home from the office at this very moment and in all probability didn't even know that their precious plasma tv with surround sound and the $11,000 ATV in the garage have vaporized into a billowing black cloud being expressed over East St. Paul right now. 

"Well," I replied, "Surely if a little boy lives at this house, he has lost all of his Pokemon cards, and all of his clothes and the other stuff that he left lying on the floor of his room, and hopefully he didn't have a puppy dog in a kennel, or a fish or a cat because they might be lost too."

"What kind of dog does he have?"

"I don't know... I was just saying.... It's all just stuff.  It's important that everyone is okay."

"Dad said we can get a dog if we can talk you into it. I really really want one.  Can we?"

Clearly, I have said the wrong thing, but my seven year old can't see that.    A car pulls away and I actually have to parallel park on Pritchard Farm Road.  I reach for my camera and my extra lens.  And then it hits me.

This is someone's home burning to the ground.  It's new, too.  I'm guessing it was built in the past 4 or 5 years.  Maybe worth a half million dollars.  I don't know who it belongs to, but it must be a young family.  Someone my age.  Might even have kids who go to school with my boy.   Maybe their son is on our hockey team.  A whole lifetime of memories is vanishing into smoke. 

This is a small bedroom community of 7000.   Mostly young families.  I have likely taken soccer or ringette or hockey or basketball photos of three-quarters of the population under the age of 9.    For a second, I thought what if I know them? or What if I've taken their photo?  

Thank GOD it's not me!

Suddenly the journalist in me sulked off to slit her wrists.  My Nikon was a shameful appendage.  I opened up the trunk, locked her safely inside, took my kids' hands and proceeded to watch from the grass next door. 

"Did his Pokemon's really burn up?" my son asks. 

"Maybe not if his bedroom is in this side of the house." I reply.  "It looks like the fire started in the garage, and the fireman is trying to keep it from spreading to this side."  But he has lost interest.    "Can I go play with Alex?"  There's lots of other 7 year olds around. 

My friend Lori is there.  She has a point & shoot camera in her hand and her face is covered with ashes.   Even though she lives about 8 houses away she has no idea who's home is lost.  Like me - she can only imagine.

"Where's your camera?" She asks.

"I thought about bringing it."  I say.  "But it didn't feel right."

"Yeah, I got some pictures."  She says.  A man with a CTV camera rushes by.  He is so excited by the event that he throws his tripod on the grass;  it's holding him back. He raises his video camera to his shoulder and rushes to the burning house.  I become a part of the mob, but I worry that someone might nick his expensive tripod.

Even though I'm the chick that everyone around here knows as "the one with the camera" I didn't take any photos.  And that's okay.  Sometimes it's okay NOT to shoot at all.