a small fire began one tuesday under the bread oven of a baker on low street. it burned through a handful of cloths and the corner of a chair before the baker, who had only gone out to lend his neighbour a measure of yeast, came back and stamped it out with the side of his foot.
no house was lost. no person was hurt. and yet for the rest of his life, whenever the baker spoke, his sentences carried the smell of singed cloth. his wife, who loved him, claimed not to notice. his children noticed. they grew up to be people who paid attention to small things that had not yet become large.
the scorch on the kitchen boards was never sanded out. it was left, said the baker, to remind the boards what they had agreed not to do again. the boards did not do it again.
— the things you nearly lost are the things you afterward love most carefully.