Gift Of Fire

“My parents were and still are devout Catholics. Not only was attending Sunday Mass mandatory for my brothers and me, so were early-morning prayers—and I mean early! I’m sure it was actually a bit later than my memory is telling me now, but it seemed that prayers always happened at the crack of dawn. Dad would barge into our bedrooms and drag his four bleary-eyed sons downstairs to say the rosary together. Most of the time I was still asleep as I began the first “Hail Mary,” and I honestly wasn’t aware of a word I’d uttered until I heard that all too welcome “Amen” escape my lips. Then, you see, I was able to return to bed until it was time to get ready for school.

Even though I would question Catholicism in my teenage years, I never lost faith that all of our lives, and the very universe itself, are guided by a force greater than ourselves—one that we cannot, perhaps, ever fully comprehend. Whether we call it God, the Divine, or simply Energy, it is a power that will enlarge our souls and enrich us if we have the courage to go through life with open minds and compliant hearts. It took me years to discover this immense truth, one I am still unraveling as I continue my living journey. However, I don’t want to get too far ahead in my story…

When I was six months old, my family moved from Metairie to the nearby town of Gretna. Our new house was big and had an amazing backyard, with plenty of space for a swing set, as well as room to play catch or tag. It also had a big peanut-shaped swimming pool where we could retreat to escape the soupy-hot, sticky air of southeastern Louisiana summers. I celebrated my first two birthdays in that sprawling, neatly mowed backyard with my entire family and some of the neighborhood kids my own age.

Although I was too young to remember much about those parties or anything else from that time, my older brothers and parents have told me all about those early years. And since my dad was a home-movie fanatic, I’ve repeatedly watched countless hours of video chronicling our family life from 1980 onward. On those earliest tapes, I can see my first and second birthday parties: the young, laughing guests; the giant cake; and me, tearing through piles of wrapping paper as gifts are placed in front of me. There’s my mother smiling adoringly at me, and my father waving happily as he holds me in his arms. There are my two older brothers carrying me around the house, playing air guitar with me, and teaching me to walk and talk as though keeping me company was the greatest game ever invented. It’s strange to look at myself as I was during the first couple years of my life.

Watching those flickering images is like glimpsing an alternate reality, one residing forever in a distant universe that I only occasionally retreat to in dreams. Nonetheless, in those videos I was a rambunctious, cute, sandy-haired kid with a mischievous smile; smooth, unblemished skin; and twinkling blue eyes that didn’t have a care in the world. It was a lovely, idyllic time.

Other than it being Saint Patrick’s Day, there was nothing about the morning of March 17, 1982, that stood out or gave my family any reason to suspect that all of our lives were about to change forever. Of course, there never are any solid indicators that something profoundly good or overwhelmingly horrific is about to occur. Life just happens to us, deals us cards of fate, and it’s our job to either endure the hand dealt or fold altogether. In my case, the life I was barely becoming aware of exploded, literally, in front of my young eyes. I’m told that it was a particularly beautiful morning in southeastern Louisiana, sunny and mild without a hint of humidity.

That Wednesday began like any other in our house: My parents rose early and had their morning prayers and breakfast done by 7:30 A.M. I was still in diapers, so naturally I stayed at home all day with my mom. My older brothers Johnny (who was nine at the time) and Scott (who was five) quickly dressed and shot out the door to catch the school bus. When Dad headed to work a few minutes later, Mom carried me outside with her so we could kiss him good-bye. As my father pulled out of the driveway, my mother noticed that the grass in our yard was getting long. As a surprise for Dad, she decided to do something she’d never done before—mow the lawn herself. A short while later, she put me down in a fenced-in area of our patio that kept me away from our swimming pool, the most obvious threat of danger to a little boy just beginning to wander and investigate. I was an active, curious child; my mother has always told me that she loved that about me.

Mom set me down just a few feet away from where she was working in order to keep a close eye. She then went into the garage and filled the lawn mower with gasoline from a gas can my dad kept stored in the corner. She hauled the mower outside, started it up, and began the task at hand. I was probably out of my mother’s line of vision for less than ten seconds when she turned to push the lawn mower in the opposite direction, but that’s all it took for me, a natural-born escape artist, to wander through the side door of the garage, probably in search of my favorite toy, a little plastic Flintstones wagon.

I’m not sure how it happened, either when I stepped into the garage or was pulling down one of my toys from a shelf, but somehow I knocked over the gas can my mom had used. Before I knew it, gasoline was pouring from the can and flooding across the concrete floor. An invisible cloud of fumes rose from the floor and within seconds had reached the pilot light of the water heater, which was standing in the far corner. A moment later, the garage exploded into a roaring inferno, and I was standing in the center of it. With the air around me blazing at nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, my skin instantly blistered and baked away, much of it to the bone. It was a flash fire that lasted only an instant … but would stay with me for the rest of my life.

I don’t remember the explosion, the fire, or the screaming afterward. But the piercing cry of her burning child sliced through the droning engine of the old lawn mower and directly into my mother’s heart. She instantly bolted toward the garage and saw my limp, smoldering body sprawled across the now-blackened cement floor. I was dying and she knew it; her screams of terror penetrated the otherwise sedate neighborhood, prompting several neighbors to call for help. She was still screaming when it arrived.

Firefighters, sirens blaring, raced to us only minutes after the blast and immediately went to work, cutting the charred and melted clothes from my body. They lifted me into their arms and carried me out of the garage to the backyard, laid me down on the grass near the swimming pool, and tried to cool my boiling body and bring down my core temperature by pouring gallons of pool water over me. Ironically, the most “dangerous” part of our yard—the pool I had been fenced off from—became a major factor in my survival…”

~ Dan Caro, The Gift of Fire: How I Made Adversity Work for Me
Dan Caro was born and raised in Southern Louisiana and grew up surrounded by the sounds of the New Orleans jazz scene. He vowed at a young age that, despite the childhood fire that robbed him of his hands, he would become a professional drummer. Dan studied music and music therapy at several universities including Loyola. His pursuit and achievement of his dream inspired thousands of people and launched his second career as a motivational speaker. He lives outside of New Orleans with his dog, Dixie.