My Town is On Fire

Photo credit: Wayne Gilmore

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My town is on fire.

When it was just underwater 3 years ago.

I stood at my kitchen sink washing dishes, looking out to my backyard. Succulents line my kitchen window. A half filled cup of water sits beside the sink.

It’s dark. I imagine orange flames licking up the last of the trees the hurricane didn’t destroy.
I really only have one. My pecan tree.

Hurricane Michael in 2018 lifted up my children’s play house and hurled it over my roof into the neighbor’s front yard.

Amongst other things.

My children were sad to lose their swings, slide and fort. So when we moved back in months later, I installed a tree swing and put it beneath the Pecan tree.

It wasn’t much, but it was something.

I’ve had my coffee on that swing many mornings. I’ve laid back and looked through the leaves framing the sun in green.

I imagined an ember catching the entire tree on fire, taking that away too.

“Hey.”

Eli, my boyfriend, came up to me and put his arms around my waist. We had a good day. It was our one year anniversary of our first date. He made me and the kids breakfast, then we went to the park and ate watermelon and played in the bay. Then we made lunch and went to see a movie afterwards.

I carefully monitored the fire the whole day. It’s five miles from me.

“Hey.” I responded.

“What can I do?”

I sighed, scrubbing a dish. “Tell me why it feels like my town is cursed.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s hard not to think it.” I slammed a dish into the dishwasher and grabbed another.

“Maybe go sit down.”

“No. I’m rage cleaning.”

“What do you need?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like. Do you want an apple, a banana?” He paused and gripped my hips. “A massage?” He breathed in my ear.

I smiled a little then. “No.”

“Hey Eli! You said you’d watch me play a game!”

My son, Judah, sat in the living room ready to rage play video games. My daughter, Lorelai, was already asleep on the couch.

Judah heard us talk about the fire and his breathing immediately grew rapid. I had to take his face in my hands and tell him it’s not like the hurricane.

“How do you know? How do you know it isn’t?”

And I paused. Reminding myself of the promise I made to never shield them from reality, but help them deal with it.

“I can’t know for sure. But there’s no need for that kind of panic yet. There are a few homes that have been destroyed, others damaged, and that is horrific. Absolutely horrific. But… with the hurricane. It was the entire town. Right now we are not in immediate danger.”

“Are you sure?”

And I offered him my weak, “Yes.”

“Let me talk to your mom for a minute and I’ll be there.” Eli answered him.

“Okay!” And Judah sat back on his perch on the ottoman in front of the TV.

Eli grabbed my half filled glass of water and moved to the fridge to refill it. I wondered if he was thirsty.

But no. He just sat the full glass back down beside me. Because I gave him no other way to help me.

My heart softened. He was always doing little things like that.

I stared at the glass before saying, “If you have any weed. I could use that.”

“Say no more.”

We stepped outside for a moment and I blew smoke towards the stars. The night was clear. A beautiful day, but not good for raging fires. Rain wasn’t expected for three days.

“I don’t know if I can make it through another disaster.” I said. “Not again. Not this soon. People are losing their homes for the second time in three years.”

Eli said nothing. Just listened.

I walked back inside to finish scrubbing dishes. My chest felt lighter, my thoughts not so urgent.

A bubble from the soap floated through the air. Eli pointed it out and our eyes followed it until it popped near the fluorescent lighting in my kitchen.

Eli slowly turned his eyes to me in a challenge. “Do it again.”

We then erupted in a soap bubble fight, using way too much Dawn dish soap, the sink running. Our hands became bubble wands and soon we were laughing hysterically.

“Eliiiiiiii.” Judah called from the living room.

So we moved to the couch and watched my anxious son play video games.

“Mom. How will we know if we need to leave?”

“There will be knocks on the door.”

I ran over in my mind the things I would grab.

But… there really wasn’t anything I could fit in the back of my truck.

My piano I learned on wasn’t exactly movable. Maybe I’d grab my children’s paintings off the walls. My children could grab what they wished.

“We can go to my condo on the beach if it comes to that.” Eli said.

Suddenly, we heard knocking sounds.

“Judah. Turn the volume off.”

Eli jumped up to check the door. “I don’t know what that was but no one is here.”

What little reprieve the weed had given me was gone.

I snuggled Judah on the couch until his eyes closed. I tried to ease his racing thoughts.

That child has been through so much before nine years of age. I placed my hand on his head and whispered a small prayer for a peaceful night. Then I kissed Lorelai on the head before heading to bed. Eli was waiting for me. And I crawled in the bed and let him wrap me in his arms.

“I know it’s a lot. You’ve got a lot going on.” He said softly. “All I know is a turtle walked in your house.”

I laughed at the memory.

My brother, who’s stationed in Germany, called me the day Russia dropped bombs on Ukraine. He told me he was on standby to be deployed.

It was an emotional conversation. But when I walked out of my bedroom, Eli was sitting on the floor next to my front door. A turtle had walked in my house.

“I didn’t do it.” Eli lifted up his hands. “He did it on his own.”

I had been cooking and got distracted, so smoke filled my house. I had to open all the doors.

Hence, the turtle.

“Remember?” Eli said, stroking my hair. “It’s shell was a little cracked. You looked it up and a turtle means protection. Protection walked in your front door.” He held me tightly. “It’s gonna be okay, Sandi.”

It was an uneasy night. But Eli was there when I woke up in a panic. He pulled me in closer when I tossed and turned.

The next day. I spent seven hours singing.

Singing.

I felt so ridiculous, so utterly useless.

“You know what stood out to me when your brother called you?” Eli said.

“What?” I responded.

“He said… I’m proud of you for being a musician. When he was told he might get deployed for war, that’s what he wanted to say to you.”

And so, I sang. I sang all day framed in smoke.

I’d never be the same after the hurricane. Once you’ve experienced disaster, you know the exact terror. You know the ache of loss. You know the sting of grief.

And not just your own, but the grief of everyone you know, experiencing it all at the same time.
My whole town held our breath that night and every night since.

Today, my town is on fire.

It was just underwater.

But this morning, I woke up with old words in my head.

“When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.”

Old words my town taught me.

So today, I’m going to take my children out for a kayaking adventure.

There will be smoke framing our view.

Disaster all around.

But my children, who are 9 and 7.

They already know how to laugh in the face of terror.

They already know how to live when there are threats of death.

And we will do it again.

My town is not cursed.

My town is a Phoenix.

And we will rise from these ashes.

We will laugh. We will sing. We will kayak, dammit.

We’ll help our neighbors rebuild.

We’ll comfort the broken-hearted. We’ll take care of our people.

Because that’s who we are.

We cannot always choose what happens to us, but if there’s one thing I know my town can do…

It’s that when we get struck down, we come back ten times better than before.

And if it is our lot to do it again.

Then we will do it again.