What Can’t Be Burned?
Rising from the ashes of the #PalisadesFire
My four-year-old cousin, Andy, wasn't supposed to sleep on the top bunk because he was too little. But after his mom, my aunt Peggy, tucked him into the bottom bunk, he rebelliously scampered up to the top of the big boy bed.
Thank God he did because while he slept, the old bedside lamp plugged in for way too long sparked and caught the bottom bunk on fire.
The heat from the blaze awakened Andy. He leaped over the flames and then ran into his mother's bedroom. Shaking her as he screamed, “WAKE UP!” After a few minutes, he successfully awakened the woman whose ability to sleep like the dead would’ve rendered her that way.
After Peggy called 911, she called my dad. I was six years old and remember the phone ringing before daybreak. My mom and dad bundled my sisters and me into the car, and my dad burned rubber, like Mario Andretti to my aunt’s house.
When we arrived, we saw the raging fire surrounded by a whirlwind of firefighters. Pajama-wearing neighbors watched from the street as reporters snapped photos that would appear in the local newspaper the following day.
My dad made the sign of the cross, hugged Andy and Peggy, and mumbled, “Thank God my parents (my grandparents) are out of town…”
My younger sisters and I cried as we watched my grandparent’s home with the great jacaranda tree in front, which housed my favorite memories, be consumed by flames. Ultimately, everything was gobbled up except for the most important things: Andy and Peggy…and my memories.
Gone was the house my family visited on weekends, with its backyard slide that ecstatically dropped us into the pool where I learned to swim.
Gone was the house that had hosted our birthdays, Christmases, and Easter egg hunts.
Gone was the mahogany dining table where we ate Sunday dinners, where the adults laughed and told off-color jokes (that we kids memorized and giggled about after dinner).
And gone was the custom-made bar my grandpa loved, with the “Murphy’s Law” quote hanging over it, ominously proclaiming, “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”
A couple of weeks later, my sisters and I accompanied four-year-old Andy to his first counseling session, where he unpacked his fire-born nightmares. Might this have influenced my future profession? Maybe.
I leaned in to hear the therapist gently remind him, “You’re a hero, Andy. That’s what the firemen told the newspaper reporter. You saved your mom’s life.”
This made Andy’s blue eyes twinkle as he sat taller in his chair. On the car ride home to his temporary apartment, I whispered to him, “Sometimes naughtiness is a good thing.”
Eventually, Peggy and Andy, my grandma and grandpa, moved to a house on Mystic Street in a town called Whittier. I pronounced it “Woodier,” and it seemed another continent away. Within a year, my family and my parents' best friends, the Tolmans, migrated there, too. By the time I turned seven, the fire felt long gone, and it seemed we’d always been Whittierites.
My family still refers to that crucible moment as “The Fire.” In the end, there were a handful of photos with charred edges that were miraculously saved along with random knickknacks, like Tahitian masks my grandpa acquired along his navy adventures that used to hang by the pool were repositioned by the new jacuzzi in the backyard.
That house in Whittier became the new hub around which all things Sullivan revolved. Five decades later, the garage that held the remaining memories of the original fire on Walnut St also mysteriously burned down in the middle of the night. The firemen said it was likely due to the faulty wiring of an old lamp that had been left plugged in.
What?
That’s strangely reminiscent of the cause of the previous fire.
The metaphysical part of me couldn’t help but feel I was in a waking dream (or nightmare). To interpret it, I meditated on what might be the unfinished business or unhealed trauma from the previous fire from my grandparents, Peggy, Andy…or myself. If it were a dream, I might ask, “What beliefs have I been plugged into that no longer serve me or my family?” I’m still percolating on this. It may take a lifetime to rewire those circuits.
Then, 22 days ago, the Palisades fire broke out. I watched from my office window as the plumes of smoke climbed over the ridge in Topanga.
When I told Dana to pack his hard drives from his music studio, he said, “Nah, we'll be fine.”
I countered, “I know—there’s been so many evacuations that they almost feel like false alarms—but this one feels different. Let's treat this like a drill. It's probably nothing. But I am seeing smoke right over the ridge. As the crow flies, that's less than a mile or so away.”
As I loaded the car, the Topanga fire chief came around ordering my neighbors and I to evacuate. This was a first. Until then, I’d never been invited to leave by anyone, much less by my neighborhood fire chief. That was enough for me. No more cavalier Kelly. My friend Suzanne called and said, “Come over for a night or two.” Instead of responding with my typical, “No, we’ll be ok,” I said, “Thank you. We’re coming over.”
We finished loading everything that started with P:
Papers like marriage licenses, certificates
Passports
Photographs
Pills (medication), and, of course, our…
Pet, Pearl.
We drove through the mountains, and at the overlook, we could see the canyon below engulfed by monstrous smoke and flames.
***
Now that the rain has come, I feel free to reflect on the fires.
Until today, every time I’d try to write during these past three weeks, I’d feel a buzzing buffer around me that seemed to say, “Just get through this. You’ll reflect later.”
We all have our particular trauma response—to fight, to flee, to freeze, or to fawn.
Mine’s a blend of all of the above—mainly freeze. It’s as if to say, “If I stay frozen, the impact won’t hurt as bad. And maybe my chilliness will offset the heat and contribute in some small way to putting the fires out.”
But now that the rain has come, I’m starting to dethaw. Even though the rain brings its own set of challenges (i.e., mudslides, but that’s a catastrophe for another day). In the dewy wetness, I feel myself taking deeper breaths than I have in weeks.
So many homes, so many dreams, so many places formerly full of life are gone. There’s no words to express the devastation, however, my friend Cheryl Torphey’s amazing daughter, Kayla Amber found the most eloquent way of expressing the devastation of losing her home in her essay, Sadness as a Gift.
My friend Robert Resnick wrote about his survivor’s guilt about having one of the few homes still standing in the Palisades—thanks to his gardener’s ability to turn on their sprinklers remotely. Gratitude mixed with horror—cognitive dissonance at its finest.
I shared with a friend I’ve had since second grade, Nancy, “I don’t deserve the kindness and generosity I’ve received because I didn’t lose a home. And on some level, nothing happened to me. Yes, my husband, dog, and I were displaced for two weeks. But, for all intents and purpose,s we’re fine.”
She replied as you’d expect a bestie to, “Honey, a fire chased you away from your home for two weeks—your town and surrounding areas have been wiped out. You’ve been through a trauma, and are still in one, for that you need and deserve support.”
Maybe it’s my Libra rising, always on the hunt for balance, but besides still having a home that survived this tragedy, here’s my gratitude list…
· I’m grateful for the air purifier that will arrive any day now.
· I’m grateful for the amazing community of neighbors, firefighters, friends, and allies.
· I’m grateful for the enormous outpouring of friends and family who reached out with support.
· I’m grateful to Suzanne Rock for reaching out immediately upon hearing about the fires and offering to take Dana, Pearl, and me in for a couple of days.
· I’m grateful to my family for taking us in for a week and a half—and while we were there, for being so gracious, loving, and generous.
· I’m grateful my husband’s trauma response is creativity that heals. During the fire, he repurposed a song from his upcoming musical, “Taking Leave” (sung by Shiah Luna and Shane August), using news coverage from the fire, creating this video.
· And I suppose I’m grateful for the playlist that’s been running through my head with
· Chaka Khan’s voice singing “Through the Fire” and Gloria Estefan belting Coming Out of the Dark.
When Chaka and Gloria take a break, Rumi busts in, takes the mic and recites his poem, The Guest house:
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Oh yes…I had to look up the entire Murphy’s Law quote—the one that hung above my grandpa’s bar. I imagine my remembering this is giving my grandparents and Peggy—all in heaven now—a hearty chuckle:
Now it’s your turn. What’s your answer the question:
What can’t be burned?
Well done!!