Ah, autumn in Malibu-gale-force winds pummeling your face, a light dusting of ash on the cars, a beautiful sunrise seen through gently billowing clouds of smoke and the dulcet tones of a sheriff’s bullhorn ordering mandatory evacuations. It’s fire season again.
On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we awaken to the news that Corral Canyon is ablaze. Although Corral’s about six miles away from us as the ember flies, we know that’s no distance at all in a wind-driven fire. We’ve heard old timers talk about the fire of ’78, which moved from the hills near the Ventura Freeway to Broad Beach-that’s a distance of around 15 miles-in 20 minutes. So we scan the horizon for the location and intensity of the smoke (white smoke good, black smoke bad: black smoke blowing in your direction worse: black smoke accompanied by visible 100-foot flames, get in the car now). And on that Saturday morning, we see black smoke billowing in our direction.
And so begins that age-old Malibu ritual I call “stuff triage:” deciding what gets put in the car when we evacuate, and what stays behind, abandoned to the advancing flames. In a five-person household filled with 20 years worth of possessions, stuff triage can be a task worthy of Solomon.
A few of the choices are no-brainers. Children? Check. Cat? Check. Yertle, our daughter Erica’s turtle? Um…Check. (But only if Erica’s willing to reach into the murky tank to pull him out).
Other choices are harder, and require a delicate balancing of some moral issues. Yes, the turtle goes, but his companions the goldfish stay: ever try catching a dozen goldfish in a 100-gallon tank? And, as my husband points out, they’re 10-for-a-dollar goldfish, dammit. (PETA members, please address the angry cards and letters to Steve. He wanted to leave the turtle behind, too.)
As for valuables-well, surprisingly, we don’t really have a great deal of valuables to load. The TV won’t fit in the car, I’m not into expensive jewelry and my late mother’s estate consisted of 19 bottles of nail-polish remover. The operating concept on this day is, “Can it be replaced?” If so, it stays, if not, it gets taken. So what we pile into the cars is a mixture of the practical: clothing, passports, pink slips and birth certificates; and the sentimental: photos, yearbooks and mementoes. Alex takes her Audrey Hepburn silkscreen, Erica packs the script from “Peter and Wendy,” her first play at Malibu High, and Sam, home from college for Thanksgiving, takes her classmate Grant, who had spent the night on the couch. (Welcome to Malibu, Grant!)
The original artwork on the walls poses a problem-of course, we’ll take my sister-in-law’s paintings, but what about all the drawings and paintings I accumulated during an early ’80s artists-as-boyfriends phase? Sadly, those must stay-no room in the car. (And, frankly, I think Steve is perfectly happy to leave them behind. He’d probably set fire to them himself if I let him.)
And, of course, there are things we forget. I pack the flag from my dad’s funeral, the Christmas stockings my mother knitted and the photo of my in-laws on the beach; but, “Aren’t you going to take Grandma?” Erica asks. Sure enough, there’s Grandma in her usual spot in the decorative box on the mantel, forgotten in the rush. (Although one might make the case that, in her present state, Grandma would be none the worse for wear even if she did get left behind.)
Well, we got lucky this time. The wind shifted, the “mandatory evacuation” on our street wasn’t really all that mandatory, and although 53 homes were destroyed in the Corral fire, ours was not among them. So when the fire turned eastward, we unpacked the cars, rehung the pictures, put Grandma back on the mantel and Grant back on the couch, and thankfully got back to Thanksgiving.
Our hearts go out to those who were not so fortunate.
But, even now, the experience has left us looking at the world through smoke-colored glasses, so to speak. Our neighborhood hasn’t burned since that fabled fire of ’78-we know that our turn is coming. And once you’ve gone through the process of mentally consigning most of your worldly goods to a heap of smoking rubble, it’s hard to pick up a Christmas catalog selling a “Pirates Of the Caribbean Pinball Game,” or a “Restaurant Frozen Margarita Maker” without thinking triage-take or leave? Kind of puts a damper on the Christmas shopping.
So we’ll continue to scan the sky for telltale wisps of smoke until the pitter-patter of boulders raining onto PCH announces that fire season is over, and our smoke-colored glasses become spattered with mud. Oh, and if some misguided Santa left “Festive lighted coasters which change colors when you place drinks on them!” under your tree, feel free to regift them to someone outside of Malibu. You and I both know the coasters are a Leave.