What I Packed
One year ago, when the fires changed Los Angeles.
Three days short of a year ago, at 7:50 in the morning, I took this photo of the view near my apartment:
My sister, who lives two buildings down from me on the same block, had just texted to tell me that the roof of her apartment’s walkway had been torn off by the vicious winds. A few minutes later, my mom sent a video from her street, four miles east of us, where she still lives in my childhood home. Those four miles, closer to the Eaton fire that had begun the night before, made a huge difference. The morning sky was darkened by a blanket of thick black smoke in all directions. A thin sliver between the red-tiled roof of her Spanish-style house and the dark cloud glowed orange.
We were fine. In the simultaneous devastations of the Eaton and Palisades fires, over thirty people died and thousands lost their homes or were displaced. It feels so strange to have lived through something that was terrifying, and to have come out the other side of it with none of the damage that many of my friends suffered through. Today, they’re hiring architects, restocking lost home goods, and advocating for their children whose schools were destroyed. Looking back at my notes from the days of the fire, I’m almost embarrassed by the earnestness of how fraught everything felt. But for days on end, none of us knew whether we would be okay.
Two days after taking the photo above, sleepless from refreshing the Watch Duty app constantly, strategizing about where to evacuate to if the need arose, and worrying about the impact of the poisoned air on my breathing, I put on a mask and went outside. Like so many of my neighbors who spent that week sheltering in place, I felt an urgency to help. I’m sure much of our aid was misplaced, but I distributed high-quality masks to people in my area who needed them, and saw that the local theatre was accepting donations for fire victims.
Here’s what I wrote after dropping off a carload in their parking lot:
It’s amazing how for five years I haven’t wanted to part with my dad’s clothes, but when packing sentimental items in case of evacuation, none of them felt like things I’d take with me. It was a no-brainer to bring several of his shirts and sweaters in good condition, and a pair of barely-worn Crocs, to donate along with blankets, bottled water, KN95 masks, and a few other items we could share, like food and puzzles.
Maybe one day I’ll see a man in an XL Eddie Bauer yellow fleece, and think that someone who needed it is better off than when it was just wrapped in plastic in my closet. A few of the blankets are ones that I had crocheted but have just been in vacuum bags under my bed. I feel ashamed that I didn’t think to donate them before. But I hope the love I put into those stitches is hugging a neighbor soon.
Just last week, in the Costco parking lot, I was stopped in my tracks by the beautiful sunset illuminating the mountains. I thought, “Thank you, Dad, for moving here.” (I’m not kidding! Ask [my partner]; I told him the same thing.)
Dad “never wanted to shovel another goddamn sidewalk” after growing up in the Catskills, so he took a job in Florida that he knew could promote him up to a role in California after a few years. “The land of The Beach Boys,” he’d say.
Then he met my mom, a girl from East L.A. He worked as a reserve for the Bomb Squad and as an L.A. County Coroner’s Investigator, helping solve the deaths of Angelenos famous and anonymous alike. After an injury sustained while rappelling from a helicopter, he retired early and returned to food service, working for a local frozen food company.
He loved this city. I hope his pink Crocs get a few more steps around its streets.
It’s not unusual to be drawn into personal grief by the overwhelm of a collective trauma. For the first time since last January, I’ve revisited the essay I wrote in the midst of the fires, analyzing the impossibility of stocktaking when considering packing up your things and leaving home. Now, I’m sharing it for paid subscribers who may have wondered what you do with an urn full of ashes when facing the prospect of losing them to a fire.
