Six Days, Seven Nights

 Los Angeles, California

I had a really good feeling about the year 2020 when it began. It was a great number and my mind runs to that kind of symmetry. But then Joel fell ill with some tenacious upper-respiratory malady that lingered through the month of January. I can't recall how February rolled, but I clearly remember that in March we were much aware of the Covid-19 virus and when I flew to Phoenix for MLB spring training Dodgers games, we were already swabbing down our airplane seats with Clorox wipes. A few days later, when I flew from Phoenix to Monterey to meet friends, our pilot informed us that the loud clunk we had heard followed the loss of computer control over the elevator, which is the vertical part of the tail. He stated that they were "troubleshooting." Not what you want to hear on a flight or in surgery. What ensued was a tense period of time before we landed amidst emergency vehicles at our rerouted destination, which was Fresno, California. Read more about this here in That Was the Year That Was, Parts 1 and 2. By the time I left Monterey, I was cognizant that the pandemic was looming. And indeed, lockdown commenced just a few days after I returned home. Needless to say, 2020 was not the year I had anticipated.

On the recent New Year's Eve, my friend Connie brought a Greek bread she had baked to my home. The loaf, which was a delicious, slightly sweet yeast bread, contained a quarter wrapped in foil. In the Greek culture, this is served at the beginning of the year and whoever gets the slice with the quarter is ensured good luck in the coming year. I got the quarter! But by January 10th, with LA an inferno, it was clear that, quarter or no quarter, the year was not off to a good start.

After five nights at Todd and Christopher's I packed up my belongings and drove away from the Hollywood Hills. I picked up Joel, and we headed towards my neighborhood. I was convinced I could get in. I know all the back roads and there were many ways to get to my street. Unfortunately, the Los Angeles Police Department was aware of all these routes and I was told that I could not enter as there was a Hard Closure. We kept trying, thinking LAPD might have missed an entry, or we might hit a barricade manned by more sympathetic officers, but none of them were having it.

So we went to Joel's and watched our devices all evening, hoping to see the evacuation zone shrunken or disappeared. I don't see myself as an optimist but I continued to be convinced that by the next day I would be allowed back into my home. By late afternoon of the following day, I was resigning myself to Les Miserables (One Day More). Then a reply to my text to a friend who was also evacuated let me know that they were letting residents back into our neighborhood. I read it to Joel who simply said let's go.

We waited in a long line of cars to get to the barricade near my street. I could see my street, and when it was our turn, I showed my ID and pointed to it. I live right there! The female officer responded Oh, you live right there? Well, let's see... I guess it's all up to me, then. Joel and I just stared at her and I'm sure my mouth was agape before she replied It's ok. You can come and go if you have ID. She signaled to the other officers who dropped the rope and allowed us to pass. My neighbor's daughter pulled into the driveway across the street from us and as I got out of the car to get my mail at the foot of my driveway she called out Welcome Home!

Joel and I brought our things into my house, including those 20 journals that had been in the trunk of my car for a week. We showered, dressed, and two hours later we were in the bar at Sol y Luna. Our bartender greeted us, pouring a generous portion of Casamigos reposado into a glass for me. He looked up at Joel. Modelo Negra? Joel shook his head responding Diet Coke. Francisco raised an eyebrow. You doing dry January? No, Joel said. But I have to get through a police barricade on our way home and I don't want to smell like I've been drinking. Standing in the bar waiting for seats to open up in this restaurant, where we often go to watch Dodgers games during the season, felt even more surreal. I said to Joel, This feels even weirder. It was resonant of the feeling I had the week before when I was driving to Todd and Christopher's and saw people eating dinner in restaurants or the restaurant valet guys hanging out in the parking lots. Life goes on and if you're not a party to the situation, you can engage in normal activities. Soon we were seated and that was when life felt like it had returned me to the familiar. I drank my tequila while Joel abstained. When we returned home a few hours later, the barricade was gone.

The fires were still raging, and the air was smoky. But by the next day I was feeling what I call a post-break clarity. This often occurs after vacations or away-from-home breaks in my routine. We took my car to the car wash and did a Vallarta (pan-latino market chain) run. I dropped off the pajamas that I had borrowed from Christopher at the cleaners and came home to start doing my own laundry. I kept the TV off and listened to music. I felt spared, motivated and energized. It was a secondary gain to a disruptive experience. And I thought back to five years ago when that flight and the entire experience of the pandemic had ended my hopes for a good year. I called my friend, Connie to ask if you have to be Greek to get the luck of the quarter. We have entered the drawing to win a free trip to Greece each year at our local Greek festival. And we have joked that if they pull out our tickets and see my Irish surname or Joel's latino one, they throw it away and keep going until they hit a name like Onassis. But Connie assures me that this is not so, and that the quarter should work ecumenically.

The fires were finally contained. I am certain that our home insurance bills for next year will surely be sky-high. People will rebuild and the projects I need done on my home will also skyrocket in costs. We saw this after the '71 and '94 earthquakes. But the emotional impact of this time is only now beginning to make itself known. We live in a world of disasters and you can prepare yourself, more or less. If you are lucky, like me, you will suffer an inconvenience. A disruption only. For others, it is a devastation. After one of the Malibu fires (yes, there have been many), we had customers coming into our business to get replacement costs for their loss. I remember having a conversation with one woman who came to our showroom with her husband. They had lost everything, escaping only with the clothes they were wearing. That must be so devastating, I remarked to her. And she replied It was. Absolutely. But then she paused and added, But, you know, after we got over the initial despair, we eventually found it to be very freeing. I have always remembered this conversation and look now at the accumulation of things in my home and how much I can free myself from them. No, not by torching them. But by learning, through the secondary gain in this experience, that we can all live with less 'stuff.' What we can't live without are the friends who offer us respite and reach out to us see how we are doing when what is around us is shaking, flooding, or burning to the ground. And if you add two Bernadoodles and a bottle of Casamigos to the scenario, you can pretty much survive it all.

And Then... Redux...

Hollywood Hills, California

We were all devastated, watching the news when an inferno swept through Lahaina in 2023. While Maui was not my favorite island, I had spent a good deal of time in Lahaina since I was a teenager. It was inconceivable that it was just gone. The images of Front Street were heartbreaking, and the loss of life in that fast moving holocaust was overwhelmingly horrific and tragic.

This year, just after wishing all our friends a very happy new year, we watched the decimation of Pacific Palisades and Altadena. They are both special neighborhoods with a strong sense of community but clearly, fires don't discriminate. They rage on and it has now been almost a week of new fires, evacuations, and waiting for it to be over.

On Tuesday I texted my friend, Lynnette, to ask if her sister's home in the Palisades had survived. She didn't know and we still haven't found out. I also texted around my circle of friends, learning that many of them had no power in their homes. Joel also had his power cut. I invited them, one by one, to come stay at my house where I have a guest room with ensuite bath. Sort of a free Air'b'nb. Wednesday night Todd and Christopher were evacuated from their home which is in the Hollywood Hills behind the Hollywood Bowl. They needed to get out with their two large bernadoodles and were heading to a friend's home in the Valley.

The good news on Thursday was that Todd and Christopher (and Franklin and Marlowe) were able to return home. The fire that had imperiled their neighborhood had been quickly knocked down by aerial support. But the larger Palisades and Altadena fires raged on. When the Kenneth fire broke out in the west end of the San Fernando Valley and was heading for Las Virgenes at the mouth of Malibu Canyon, I texted Joel to see if he was on his way. His condominium complex was in the direct line of that fire. And he had been to this rodeo before with the Woolsey fire in 2018 when he and his late Bassett, Buster, had evacuated to my house just before the fire reached his complex. All of the buildings were spared but the brush and shrubbery was blackened and burned and there was smoke and water damage in and around all of the units.

By Friday morning we knew that the Kenneth fire had not jumped the 101 freeway but was running along it on the north side, heading into Ventura County. So Joel was able to return home. Late that afternoon I learned that the Palisades fire had turned east due to a change in wind direction, and was heading towards Mandeville Canyon and Brentwood. When I saw an evac warning along Mulholland Highway, my stress level finally rose to 7+ on a scale of 10. I was texting Joel when he called me. And I started to cry. I can't do this. I can't spend another sleepless night not knowing where this is going and if I'm going to need to get out. And he replied that he would be right there.

Throughout the evening we watched as the warning zone expanded. While I had my go bag ready, as it became more likely that I would need to leave, I began to pack more things -- random things. Joel told me to take my house deed and my Tesla's pink slip. I packed up my La Mer and a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label, an expensive bottle of scotch that Joel had given me for Christmas. I threw in some cashmere sweaters. I grabbed my dance bag. It was a combo of what I might need and what would be expensive to replace. Let's face it, you can't pack your furniture. I had already packed 20 years of my journals and stashed them in the trunk of my car. That's my life. I don't need photos. I need my memories in my words. But the process of packing essentials is haphazard at best. It's a grab and wait.

I heard the alarm go off on Joel's phone before mine did. He was in the kitchen and looked up when I walked in. Is that it? He said, That's it. Let's get you in your car. In anticipation, I had texted Todd and Christopher and they assured me I could go to them. They had even offered to come and pick me up! Joel followed me down the driveway, and we got into the traffic on the street below me. It was congested with the cars of other evacuees; stop and go as we approached 4-way stop intersections (although predictably, people were not taking their turn). I lost sight of Joel's Escape in my rearview mirror.

Connie had called me while I was still in my garage, and she stayed with me in voice all the way to Todd and Christopher's. I passed my favorite sushi restaurant, and a salsa club where Joel and I had danced many years back. And Miceli's restaurant where I used to go with my parents to hear the waiters sing opera and Broadway tunes. Swinging onto Cahuenga, I passed the Hollywood Bowl where several months back I had gone with three girlfriends to a Sarah McLachlan concert. I passed the Magic Castle where Todd's and my dear, dear friend Curt had gone to watch magic performed just six months before he passed away last December.

Franklin and Marlowe met me joyously when I arrived. Todd and Christopher both hugged me. And that was thirty-six hours ago. I am sitting at their dining room table. Christopher is reading the New York Times. Todd is working on his tablet. It's a quiet place, here in their home which is stunning. We haven't had a TV on, just music. And at night, this sheltering house is softly lit. It's like a zen space. But our phones and iPads are at hand, checking the progress and prognostications of this ridiculously intense calamity which has befallen our beloved city. Things don't seem to change much on the evac maps. Some small yellow areas of warning have been added. And it is beginning to feel like Groundhog day, with today tougher than yesterday. At least with an earthquake, besides aftershocks, the big upheaval is one and done. Then you can turn to the labor of repair and restoration. But this just goes on and on. The damage both physically and emotionally is incomprehensible. I am someone who initially does well in a crisis. And I have dealt with crises and tragedies in my lifetime. But that initial bravado slowly gives way to an expected degree of anxiety and then depression. Knowing this, I have to stay aware and use the tools I rely on. And a part of that is in gratitude. So far, I am a lucky one. To be forced out of my home by nature is a disruption. But so many thousands are experiencing a true tragedy. I feel I will be ok. I hope that my home will also be. But what I know is that this city, which I love and which holds all of my life's history and a great deal of my family's, will be profoundly damaged by this colossal event. And that will be for a very long time to come.