Sirens

I was outside yesterday, weeding my vegetable patch.  (It's not big enough to call it a garden.)  And while bent over pulling weeds I heard the loud sirens of an ambulance and a fire engine as they raced past our corner.

We hear sirens on a regular basis; we figure it's because we live at a prominent corner of a neighborhood of young families and elderly ones.  But the wail was much louder to my ears, having no walls to interrupt or insulate the sound.

My curiosity got the better of me after a few minutes, since the noise had ceased shortly after passing our house.  Sure enough, when finding a better vantage point, I could see the emergency vehicles maybe a half dozen houses down the street.  Being fairly new to the neighborhood, I have not met those neighbors yet.  However, they have a life story and something significant was happening at that moment.

Shortly afterward the ambulance sirens sounded again leaving that residence.  I did not know what had happened, but I wondered - not in a rubber-necking kind of way, but in a what-just-happened-in-your-life kind of way.

Everyone has a story.  Everyone has a mother and father, whether they knew them or not.  Everyone has good days and bad.  I wonder sometimes walking past strangers on the street what their lives are like, what are their successes and what are their heartbreaks.  Letting one's imagination run wild can lead to novels, reading them allows us to glimpse what might be someone's life.

But still . . . I wonder what has happened in that home down the street.