The Power of Instinct: A Personal Story of Trust and Survival in the Midst of a Housefire

We are born with instincts that transcend our level of understanding. We don’t understand because we refuse to acknowledge certain truths about our capabilities. If we nurtured even only some of our instincts and allowed ourselves to be open-minded to possibilities, we would slowly start trusting ourselves enough to begin testing those boundaries we needlessly uphold. I owe my life to my mom’s rejection of conventional belief, to a single decision based on instincts that she could easily have disregarded. Emotions are our strength; we merely need to learn to understand what emotions are trying to tell us.

          My dad was in the military. He accepted a transfer from Little Rock, Arkansas, where we lived briefly, to Fussa, Tokyo, Japan. I had just taken my first steps in our home in Little Rock, and as young as I was, and as many details as there were to hammer out about moving overseas, while my dad went ahead to Japan to handle those details, my mom and I went to live with her dad. My grandfather lived in Charlotte, North Carolina. The most interesting thing about Charlotte is that it’s at the center of some of the most intriguing travel destinations in the country, such as Asheville, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh, and it is the most populous city in North Carolina. There isn’t much about this subtropical metropolis, save one unusual incident, that is worth noting.

My grandfather worked and one afternoon, while he was away, my mom and I were hanging out at the house. I was asleep in my crib. My mom had sun tea in the yard baking, all the house windows were open, a Crosby, Stills, & Nash album was in the record player, and my mom was cleaning while dancing around the house. I wasn’t even two years old yet. After my mom finished cleaning, she needed to stop by the grocery store to pick up some groceries for the week and some for dinner that night. I was still asleep in my crib. My mom was convinced she could make it to the grocery store and back before I woke up, and perhaps that was an inspired hope. I was famously fussy when my nap was disturbed, and the fallout was considerable. My behavior was something to be avoided at all costs. My mom knew this, of course, better than anybody.

My mom checked on me in my crib, measures were taken to ensure my nap might last as long as possible. Soothing music was playing in my room, I was comfortably clothed, not too hot and certainly not too cold. My crib was fastened shut so even if I were to wake while she was gone, the bars would keep me safe and secure. She started driving to the grocery store, which wasn’t far away. The car window was down, and a light, warm breeze sifted through her short brunette hair, the radio was playing The Guess Who's “No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature,” a song that’s always had a special place in my heart. She was singing along. Before the end of the song, my mom became overwhelmed with a feeling of dread, as if a flash of thunderless lightning opened the heavens and found her car. A sudden warm itch that demanded attention.

My mom turned the car around and headed back for the house. She entered my room to find me still asleep in my crib, the soothing music was still quietly soothing, and the temperature was still comfortably warm, and certainly not too cold. She woke me up and the fallout was devastating, incomparable to anything witnessed by a mother anywhere and at any time. My mom put me in the car still screaming, kicking even, it was disastrous. As we neared the grocery store, I finally started to calm down. Besides the destruction I might cause strapped in a car seat in the backseat of anything made in the late ‘70s or early ‘80s is nothing compared to the devastation I might cause in a public grocery store.

After shopping, I’m sure I was working my way through my favorite infant candies on the ride home, surrounded by tall paper bags full of packaged and canned foods, some produce of course, and whatever else might have been necessary to pick up. We turned down the block my grandfather’s house was on. Roadblocks and officers were sectioning off yellow tape trying to control a gathering crowd as firefighters scrambled to curb the fire that engulfed my grandfather's house. Parked on the side of the road, in the background a raging fire, my mom turned back to see me bobbing my head to the music and eating some infant-safe candy.

My mom could have ignored her feelings and brushed them off until after loading groceries into the station wagon’s backseat. Instead, she recognized the feeling, listened to it, explored it, and heard what she was meant to hear before turning around and pulling me from an invisible fire. I owe my life to a feeling sensed in a single moment. I was a teenager the first time my mom told me that story. It was a dinner party and we had family friends over. At that moment, my mom decided to share for the first time, at least with me and our friends (my dad certainly was aware). I listened intently to the story, intrigued for obvious reasons, and at the end of which I sat up in my seat, taped the corners of my mouth with a cloth napkin, and said, “Excuse me, wh…what?”

We need to develop our instincts and explore the things they try to tell us about our bodies, our thoughts, our surroundings, our situations, and our relationships, we’re like superhumans who refuse to acknowledge our superpowers while we sit around dreaming of having superpowers; your instincts are probably not used to being acknowledged so it might take time to develop them, but they are a valuable resource once you finally do and you'll be a better person for it. And who knows, they might even save a life.