Fires burning in Los Angeles and Ventura counties and homes reduced to dust and rubble remind me that I know something about losing everything. I have been evacuated three times, but have been lucky that my house did not burn down. The 2009 Jesusita Fire was the closest call. The hillside behind our cul-de-sac burned to a charred mound. News casters from out of town reported that all the houses on my street had burned down, minutes later, they corrected themselves. It was the hill behind that had burned down, but no houses were on it.
As a child, I thought that an earthquake was the biggest natural disaster to fear. The countless fire drills didn’t seem as scary as duck and cover earthquake drills Now kids have to worry about manmade disasters, such as school shootings. Is there such a thing for a fire drill to prepare students for a catastrophe such as the Palisades fires or fires that are airborne and can flare up in distant cities?
Living in Santa Barbara feels like a dream come true, until there’s a red flag warning or high winds. High winds mean a spark can travel miles away from an uncontained fire. Every time there is a high fire alert, my body automatically goes into a panic, a subtle nervous feeling that never leaves. It’s impossible to get a good night’s sleep when there is a fire threat. The Palisades fire is a hundred miles away from Santa Barbara but the Auto, Hughes and Laguna fires sprouted much closer in Ventura county.
I’d like to think that I can easily grab a few important items: my computer bag with my computer and my important documents such as my passport and birth certificate, my wallet and keys, and at least one guitar and a ukulele. I have a box of old family photographs that I would also like to think I could throw in my car. In the event that I wouldn’t have time to pack my car with anything, I have come to terms with the fact that I may not be able to save anything, that I might be lucky to drive away in my car.
If I cannot save treasured things, I know those possessions do not define me. When I was a child I lost all my things to vandalism. My young, single mom and I lived in a two-bedroom apartment with my mom’s friend Carol, or she thought Carol was a good friend. One day, while my mom was at work and I was at school, Carol and all of our belongings from the apartment disappeared. Everything was gone. The kitchen table, my dresser, my clothes, my toys. We never understood why all of our modest personal items were taken. It was the last time my mother would live on her own. We moved back in with my grandmother. When I left to attend UC Berkeley, my mother stayed home until her early death in 1994.
My evacuation bag remains ready, but Sunday’s rainfall offers much needed relief to the fires in Southern California. Now, we keep an eye out for the dangers of mudslides. For this week’s poetry connection, I two poems from my first poetry book, How Fire Is a Story, Waiting.
Tea Fire 2008, Santa Barbara, CA
Melinda Palacio
Think anything but
burnt english breakfast or charred earl Grey.
the tea Fire consumes recklessly like the drunk my father once was.
Santa Anas and sundowners force me to grab
photos, phone, laptop, and pink fuzzy slippers,
a jumble thrown into my car.
I wait for the fire to end its binge,
examine valuables, feel mocked by the shoe box of photos Ii saved.
A parade of people who exist only in photographs, faces
who no longer fuel lost friendship.
My father relegated to an old shoe box.
Why do i hesitate before lighting a match?
How Fire Is A Story, Waiting
Melinda Palacio
My grandmother caught the flame in her thick hands.
Curled fingers made nimble by kaleidoscope embers.
Fire burns hot and cold if you know where to touch it, she said.
I watched the red glow spit and wiggle as it
snaked down the thin timber, a striptease,
born out of the festive sound of a half-filled matchbox.
Through orange windows framed by obsidian eyes, i saw the child she once was.
A little girl who raised herself because her mother had a coughing disease.
blood on her mother’s handkerchief didn’t stop her from dreaming.
Maria Victoria was going to be a singer with her deep, cinnamon stick voice.
She watched novelas in the kitchen while waiting for dough to rise.
her body, heavy with worry for two families and three lifetimes. she tucked
Mariachi dreams under her girdle. lullabies escaped on mornings
warmed by her song falling into gas burners turned on high.
The flame on a stove was never the same. it had a bad hangover,
didn’t remember the many matches lit when its starter broke down.
My grandmother rolled paper into a funnel,
stole fire from the pilot to light the stubborn burner on the right.
Crimson burned blue on the white paper, its folded edges
curled black like a lace ruffle on a skirt.
The finicky flame can’t comment on its magic.
the thousands of tortillas and pancakes cooked over the years.
how i burned myself roasting a hot dog campfire style.
how a melted pencil smudged under my sister’s eyelid makes her beautiful.
My grandmother noticed the time, almost noon.
she needed to make three dozen tortillas to feed her family of thirteen.
the show over, she blew the match into a swirl of gray squiggles,
snuffed before it had a chance to burn hot on her finger.
Funny, how fire is a story, waiting.
*an earlier version of this column was published in the Santa Barbara Independent
