All That Matters is in Two Cars
Why didn’t I plan for an evacuation?
Time is limited. How to cram twenty-one years in this house — a lifetime — into two cars? The children are grabbing PlayStations and video games. I search frantically for photos, the last remnants of my mother’s family preserved in a box. Where in the hell did I put that? Wedding album — who moved it? I run from room to room grabbing hard drives and passports — pictures off of the walls — important papers from file drawers. Time is not my friend.
Why didn’t I plan for an evacuation?
I look at all the trinkets we have collected over a lifetime. The table set for New Year’s Eve dinner with our wedding crystal and silver, the closest thing to an heirloom I possess. My husband had been kind to surprise me by setting the table but the silver, which usually lives in a box, is now perfectly placed about and I do not have time to collect it from the table.
The Christmas tree is filled with ornaments amassed throughout the travels of our relationship. The hand-knitted Christmas stockings made by my mother-in-law to welcome each new member into the family hang along the mantel — I grab those. What is worthwhile and irreplaceable?
The memories made, the screams and laughter, so many gatherings… I cannot bundle those up and put them in the car. There is the ridiculous collection of shoes I have purchased over the years. They go untouched. I remind my husband who is fond of calling me “Imelda” that, in the end, the shoes did not make the cut. He laughs.
I am irritated by my 15-year-old son who struggles to put the bike rack on the car in 100 mph wind gusts. He wants to save his bike — and then mine. After all, that is his prized possession. He has grabbed my drawer of jewelry without my knowledge. I did not even think of that. My irritation turn to wonder and then pure love. Clothes, dogs, food — we load our cars until there is just enough room to hold us. We check on our neighbors and make sure they are leaving, exchanging phone numbers. My husband walks from room to room videotaping our home, preserving what might not be there tomorrow for posterity, and the insurance company. We say goodbye to our house.
Everything important is in these two cars.
We settle in at my mother-in-law’s house with our family and another family of friends on the run. In all, there are eight adults, four teens, four dogs, four chickens and a blind cat. Our eyes are stinging from the smoke and the smell of burning electrical components fills our noses. We settle down to watch TV nonstop through the night. The kids steal away to play endless hours of Fortnight. The dogs huddle close and we wait for the interminable night of hell to pass.
Time slows down and spins chaotically forward all at once, like the tornado of flames consuming my town, my life, my heart
The first light arrives at last. A text from our next-door neighbor, he has made it back into the neighborhood, it is untouched. Less than a quarter mile away, my friend’s neighborhood is gone as surely as if a bomb had landed. It has landed and our community is split in two — an eerily untouched area and total destruction coexisting side-by-side.
We are left to ask why we were spared and how we can help those who were not? We stare into what is our newest reality and we are left with the choice to surrender or to be resilient. I come from a long line of the latter so there really is no choice to be made. I roll up my sleeves and get to work. I am buoyed by my friend’s wry comment while staring at the smoldering hole that was once her home, “I was looking to be a minimalist in 2022.”
