Clawing back to normal

my thoughts on coming back after the fires

“Not all was lost, not all was lost,” I found myself mumbling over these last months. And that is so completely and utterly true for us. We are the lucky ones. And even if we had lost our home to the fire, we would have somehow survived that, too. Getting to move back into our home is a gift—something I’m sure our friends in Altadena still dream about. Instead of the ongoing nightmare, being on hold with the insurance company, and their homes and everything they owned turned to dust. For many of our friends and neighbors, there was life before and life after the fires.

Loosha and the fairy tree on our favorite walk in the neighborhood

Accepting our reality has meant embracing our good fortune while also pulling my hair out for months thinking about crawl spaces, resuspension particles, and throwing away infected mattresses. It has meant becoming an overnight environmental scientist, tuning into Caltech talks about current lead and asbestos levels in our soil, air, and homes — holding my breath each time that the data will deliver us the news we so badly want to hear (so far so good).

While the flames of the fire themselves didn’t reach our neighborhood that night, the smoke and ash plume - so big it was visible from outer space - did. Winds of 100 miles per hour, laden with heavy metals and burnt teddy bears, photographs and baby clothes, lead and asbestos and family heirlooms, cyanide and legos, came pouring onto our street.

That night, as the sky turned black above our picturesque little neighborhood, it dumped toxic debris onto our windowsills and seeped into our carpets, into Loosha’s sandbox, and across our vegetable beds. It created a panic that forced us to evacuate within 15 minutes of receiving a phone call from a neighbor who spotted the canyon ablaze from her doorstep. An evacuation that turned into several months, a new temporary school, and a near mental break on my part from our landlord gaslighting me about remediation costs. He didn’t have to wonder if it was safe enough to bring a four-year-old home to his 100-year-old house with leaky windows after such a catastrophic event, but we did. No amount of professional cleaning or remediation could cleanse my soul of that feeling.

One thing that has become abundantly clear to our generation is that we are capable of overhauling our lives at a moment’s notice. Fight or flight doesn’t stand a chance against a millennial parent who graduated with insane financial debt into a recession, a global pandemic, and now round two of fucking Trump. We are crystal clear on how little the government cares about us as individuals, and we are even more aware of why community is truly everything.

I am clawing my way back to normal by forcing myself to go to the farmers market. Catching up with people who have also been to hell and back. Welling up with tears when I learn of yet another person I know who is moving out of state because they lost it all. I stand there in the market next to the pop-up tents filled with piles of artichokes and giant English shelling pea, taking in the sight of our beautiful towering mountains in the background, the burn scar so very visible. A dry brown outline of destruction and death tucked up against a verdant landscape of greenery and abundant life.

I fondle the produce and fill my bags with kale for salads and pixie mandarins for lunchboxes. The vendors give Loosha stickers like they always do, and I make sure to get my eggs from the handsome farmer—because if eggs are going to cost a small fortune, I’d rather he have my money.

I come home with my bounty, washing big loads of bloomsdale spinach (IYKYK) in our sink full of water, and lay out kitchen towels to dry bunches of carrots and radishes, imagining all the meals I’m going to cook.

But the cooking part hasn’t fully returned to my life as of yet. Not in the way it used to, at least. Right now, I’m still eating for sustenance. Though there are glimpses. I know soon I’ll find myself in my kitchen, knee-deep in ideas, relishing how incredible it is to live in Southern California. How special to be mere miles from the farms who produce so much of our country’s most glorious food.