fire season

It seems to start earlier and get worse every year, one of the things you get used to when you live out here:  California is on fire again.

When the kids were little, we lived in a canyon in Los Angeles.   One day while I was watching the kids play,  I idly looked out the second story window and saw  smoke and flames across the canyon.   It was close enough to see the flames clearly visible, in the hills below Mulholland Drive, near the scene of the famous Bel Air fire of 1961.

Back then I was the world’s most neurotic mother.  And here’s what I did.   I left my babies playing happily on the floor, and I grabbed our new video camera—pointing it out the window and rolling for a couple minutes, calmly narrating what I saw.  And then I put down the camera and dialed 911.

The reporter in me superseded the mother—-probably the only time ever.   I found out the Fire Department was doing a controlled burn in the hills that day, and I sat back on the floor with the kids and forgot about it.

We were lucky.  I’ve covered fires for the news, and they’re no joke.   As a civilian, I’ve experienced hurricanes and earthquakes and blizzards and mudslides and floods—and nothing scares me more than fire.   We don’t live in a fire area anymore, but it can happen anywhere, and it does.

V’s house burned down when he was a teenager; and it happened here to some friends a few years ago.  And although I know material things are just things, I’m obsessively attached to my memories, and  the prospect of having my entire life disappear is terrifying.  So I often wonder what I would grab—-although I never do anything about it.

Though experts recommend keeping a box packed with important documents, the people I know never had enough time to grab anything.   I wouldn’t be ready anyway, even if I had a week to get my stuff together; I’m still looking for my passport someplace on my desk.

 Right now I’m not thinking about that.   I’m thinking how strange it is that in California we don’t experience normal seasons like winter, spring, summer, fall—our seasons seem marked by disasters.   And now it’s fire season,  beginning its deadly destructive course through California.  I’m thinking of all the people who will lose their homes, a few who may lose their lives, and  mostly I’m thinking about the amazing firefighters— who are the real superheroes of our time.