I live in Sonoma County California.
As you may know, this is the county currently being ravaged by wildfires once again.
The power has been out for days, sirens are near-constant, people are panicked, then zombies, then back to panicked again.
The smoke blurs your eyes, and burns your lungs.
No ice for the coolers. No gas for the cars.
Apocalyptic is how I would describe.
After surviving the giant Tubbs Fire of 2017 that completely decimated a large portion of my city, whose reports spread as far as a Japan, and after being evacuated from our home for 11 days,
you’d think we’d be old pros at this.
Old pros we are clearly not.
When the news came in Saturday night that our power would be cut to reduce the risk of electrical spark during the expected hurricane force dry winds, and we realized we needed to go,
for a minute I just spun in circles thinking of what else I should grab.
Yearbooks? Danskos? Cottage cheese?
My seven year old returned within moments of me sending her off for what she felt was important.
Seven year olds don’t need long to choose.
Her bag held only her beloved raggedy bunny, and a nerf gun without any bullets.
“But it doesn’t have bullets,” I’d said to her, and she answered,
“We’ll have to stop for some along da way.”
I had already gotten the important papers and all the precious photo albums,
a few of our clothes and some toiletries.
We grabbed our pets, and some of their food,
but what else would we maybe need?…
There I was mid-spin, trying to think of every possible detail and outcome for every person in my home when suddenly I heard the familiar sound of the hand-vac being fired up.
The sound-track of our home.
Out of the corner of my eye, there passing by me, bent completely in half, went my husband
-known for being slightly OCD –
vacuuming as the earth around him burned.
*vrrrrrrrrrrrrrr vrrrr vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr*
He got the edges of the runner real good.
I didn’t say anything at first, positive that SURELY he’d see me frantically trying to load up our car and our important things alone and come to my aid.
Nope.
He just kept right on vacuuming.
After loading up the car myself, I returned inside to see him now folding laundry.
I just deep breathed standing there in the hall.
But then he started organizing his sock drawer and I couldn’t take it any more.
“What are you doing?” I asked him, trying to control my tone.
“We need to get ready to go.”
“I just cleaned this house,” he answered.
“I want to make sure if we have a place to come back to that it is an organized one.”
And so we waited.
Me and the girls sitting in a line on the couch tapping our toes and clutching our special things while he discarded any socks that had holes.
Later, once we were safely evacuated a town away, I began to realize just how much my own “perfect preparedness” had lacked.
I had grabbed my volumizing spray, but had forgotten my toothbrush.
I had a really good fall colored nail polish, but zero deodorant.
I’d been so busy judging his weird emergency preparedness that I’d somehow come away with only dress shoes for one of my daughters, but thank God I’d packed three giant for-wet-hair combs.
Later, as we waited in line in a Starbucks, mid-way to our final evacuation location almost 4 hours away, my 12 year old, Chloe came to me finally far enough removed from the trauma to smile and confess her own,
“Mama, you know when you told us to grab some things that were necessities, and some that were special to us? I didn’t know what to do.
I ended up bringing 6 velvet scrunchies and a plain lanyard with nothing attached.”
We laughed at ourselves in that line.
At how we all cope with stress in our own strange way.
Later that night, on a community Fire Information page, I posted part of this same story asking fellow evacuees what the weirdest thing they had grabbed was.
The response was hilarious and overwhelming.
I think it’s nearing 1000 comments now from people sharing the crazy things they grabbed in that panicked moment of having to face just what really matters to you.
One lady had grabbed a frozen pork loin and roll of duct tape.
One a ziplock bag full of multiple shades of brown string.
Another woman thought surely she’d meed the baggies of all her cat’s teeth that had just been pulled at the vet.
One man every pair of socks that he owned, and then only flip flops.
One lady said all she had grabbed were her dad’s ashes, and a man commented,
“So….You grabbed the one thing that had already been burned?”
To see every comment,
(which you really should if you like to laugh till you hurt)
you can view them with this link:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/586292148428439/permalink/1145120509212264/
Many people commented just to thank me for helping them laugh a little through the stress.
All of them proving that we are not that different after all;
whether holding our lanyards or our hand vacs.
After all, we are all just going through life grabbing at things that help us feel at home
no matter how far from it we go.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
