Lost in the Fire
The first time I say goodbye to my home is in the early hours of Wednesday. The fire flames illuminate the mountains and my children warn me with each passing second I pack that the light seems to be getting closer. The wind whips at speeds I’ve never seen before and my oldest begs our pup to go potty as branches crash around them.
Enough clothes for several days. I pack in the dark, as the power left us last night. When the lights went out, I stepped on our front porch to hear a cracking sound that made my stomach jump. Surely the earth has split to welcome us into its depths, I thought. And then I looked out to our street to see a car struggling to leave from a fallen tree blocking us in.
Back inside I moved the only things I could not survive losing into my room—away from the trees swaying and threatening to topple on our house in the hurricane speed gusts. My oldest went into my bed, though he would have just as sleepless a night as me. My middle and youngest sons wrapped around the perimeter of my bed. Both barely waking to realize they’d been moved.
It’s 3:30am when the alert doesn’t wake me, as I’m already awake but attempting to sleep. “Get ready to leave” the message says. I sneak out of the room, feeling my way down the hall and call Ben who is in Chicago.
“What do I do?” I tear up before the last word can leave my mouth.
“Pack up some clothes for each of you and go.”
In the dark my children stir as I start to throw clothes on the beds and floors of their rooms. Shaking as I’ve spied the still closer flames over the ridge. What to take when it might be goodbye?
Clothes.
Jewelry. Not the nice stuff. I forget a diamond bracelet but pack my grandma’s necklace that she wore every day that I can remember.
Documents that tell us who we are, as if we might forget while fleeing our home.
Cash, computers, books.
Our pup can hear me moving through the house and worries I might leave her in the commotion. Her fears are relieved as I tuck her in the car with the boys. All of them telling me it’s time to go.
Strength that is not their own allows several men to lift the trees off the road blocking our escape and we leave, not quite sure if we will ever come back. Halfway to my brother’s house (who is asleep and unaware of our evacuation) my middle son cries as he has to pee and is scared to tell me. We stop in an industrial area and all three boys pee on the side of the road. As we pull back toward the freeway my oldest starts to vomit, trying to swallow it as he tells me he’s OK. Even though the lie sounds convincing, I know none of us are OK.
When we pull up to my brother’s house still in the early morning hours, my middle son runs out of the car to throw up in the grass. My oldest has already lied down in another patch and is trying to sleep. The hillbillies have arrived, I think as we spread out in the yard.
Ben flies home and I go up to meet him at the house, to see if there is a house to meet him at. Our home stands and I eagerly enter to make sure I haven’t forgotten what cannot be replaced. The flames are harder to see and seem just a bit further in daylight. I walk around the house and tidy up, an optimistic gesture that, perhaps, I do to assure myself we will return. As I make the beds and load the dishwasher, it feels as if I’m cleaning for the honored guest of destruction.
When I say goodbye to my home for the second time, I carry our Christmas ornaments in the back of my car—ornaments that I have had since I was born and been given each year since. A tradition Ben and I have continued, exchanging with the boys every year. Memories that no one would care to steal but are priceless to us.
It is the threat of losing everything that makes me realize that only few things can’t be replaced. What is really lost in the fire is not the things (though yes, these matter and so many have lost so much) but the sense of belonging. The mooring of our identities to a place that has provided safety, shelter, laughter, births, deaths, happiness and even loss.
What is lost in the fire for so many is something that can’t be rebuilt easily. A shorthand to memories has been expunged from each person as the flames have devoured home after home.
A week later from our evacuation and we are home now. My littlest has stopped asking if his things have melted in the fire. My oldest is excited to return to school. All of us enter our house with a sense of appreciation we didn’t know before.
We are safe. We are grateful. We are home.
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