Last Tuesday morning, the Rocker and Aunt Kiki called on their way home from the MFM (Maternal Fetal Medicine Specialist) – they’re having twins remember! I was looking at the ultrasound on my cell, tracing the tiny femur of one and beautiful lips of the other while Bob was getting the details. They were in a yin yang position, feeling free to flip around at will. Weight and head circumference all perfectly normal as we enter the third trimester. Now I told Kiki she must rest, the baby girls will be growing exponentially.
What I didn’t expect next was an apocalypse – the most devastating fire to break out in Southern California’s history – that very afternoon.
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire….” Robert Frost
That evening I called my son. I was hesitant because usually we see the worst on TV and what I think is very close to them (an earthquake, a landslide, a flood or a fire) turns out to be pretty far away. But this time I could hear it in his voice; he had corralled the cats into their carriers and one wasn’t very happy about it, he was talking to Kiki who was driving home through smoke, and he’d call me back later. Later, the first thing he would grab when they left their home was Grandma Ada’s painting.
What would be the first thing you would grab?
This morning they are among the lucky ones, their home is still standing. The nursery they had been painting is just as they left it. The Altadena fire consumed my niece Lucia’s school, the elementary school her daughters attend and where she teaches music. We had just visited with them over Christmas break; the Love Bug huddling with her cousins. Wildfires are so fickle. They dance around until the wind takes an ember flying to the next place, and the next… and the Santa Anna winds are merciless. Joan Didion writes:
“There are a number of persistent malevolent winds, perhaps the best known of which are the mistral of France and the Mediterranean sirocco, but a foehn wind has distinct characteristics: it occurs on the leeward slope of a mountain range and, although the air begins as a cold mass, it is warmed as it comes down the mountain and appears finally as a hot dry wind. Whenever and wherever foehn blows, doctors hear about headaches and nausea and allergies, about “nervousness,” about “depression.”
In the next few days I’ll be sharing their friends’ stories of loss, like Kiki’s friend in Altadena who just moved into her first house in December only to see it burn to the ground last week. Let’s not forget these people when the wind dies down, people left with nothing but whatever they could grab. I would grab the pictures of my past, the ones that were never in the cloud – Daddy Jim as a young Navy recruit, Nell and the Flapper on a NYC balcony, the portrait of the Rocker on his first birthday with his big sister.
This was us last month in LA.
MountainMornings 