CW: fire, natural disaster

Seeds

“What the hell am I supposed to do with these?” I gaze at a packet of zinnia seeds
that were tucked in with the supplies I just picked up from the Red Cross. “Masks,
gloves, goggles – seeds? Seriously?!” I squeeze my eyes shut as I hold onto the
scream that is forming in my throat. I stuff the seed packet into my back pocket.

It’s the first time I’ve seen what’s left of our property. James and I wanted to
drive up in one car, but one of us had to grab the hazmat stuff while the other
dropped the girls off at grandma Jane’s. I beat him here.

Growing up in the Sierras I took the wind in the trees for granted. I never feared
the sound of the wind pushing the forest canopy around, I found it musical. The
soothing limb songs seemed to make everything right in the world.

The limbs are silent now, and everything is anything but right in the world. The
needles that buffered the breeze and created tree harmonies are gone and the green
rustle against blue, sunlit sky - a memory. As far as the eye can see, charred
forests dot the landscape like an abysmal graveyard. The only sound I hear is my
breath and the rumble of distant fire engines. The birds and squirrels and deer
have either been fried to powder or fled to safer woods.

The silence is a gift today because even the slightest breeze is a trigger for me
now - sending my mind tumbling back to the night that everything changed.

My foot sinks into a deep pile of soot and ash. It’s light like fresh snow, but
dust-dry, powdery, it stains everything it touches. Another step and the fine ash
poofs into the air, floats and lingers, then settles. Before me - a lone chimney,
river rock hearth, melted metal table, melted appliances, melted window-frames,
miscellaneous items I don’t recognize. The melted remains of the place I call home.

The ash-powder has leaked into my new shoes. They were donated by a do-gooder who
didn’t realize that folks like me would need boots in the days to come. My cynicism
mimics my new position in the world. Displaced. At least the sneakers are new.
Nothing makes you feel homeless quite like getting your neighbors donations of
threadbare towels, used underwear and stained clothes.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful. I just genuinely hate these sneakers. They fit
ok, they just aren’t what I would pick. Neon orange and black with red shoestrings.
They remind me of the reason I’m here, the reason I’m wearing donated sneakers.
Fire.

I contemplate the crimson shoelaces as they pop through the dismal ash. The bizarre
juxtaposition makes me shake my head.

It’s been a long month and I’m breathless from exhaustion and toxic air. The AQI is
above 400 again and it’s making me edgy. It’s like breathing in a constant reminder
of loss. It permeates the senses for hundreds of miles in every direction. During
the day a huge plume of smoke forms over the eastern horizon, like an atomic
explosion. As the cooler night air settles in it pushes the strangling smoke
downward, into the lower elevations where it slithers through neighborhoods, seeps
through windows and spreads the reek of burned up treasures.

I don’t care about me, but it rips at my guts that my girls will carry this burden
with them for the rest of their lives. James and I call it the haunting. We know
intellectually that the stuff that burned, was just stuff. Our children aren’t
mature enough to see it that way. All they know is that their favorite toys, the
only home they ever knew, the place they felt safe – was there one minute - and the
next, POOF, turned to smoke.

The authorities told us we could sift through the rubble for personal heirlooms -
as if anything could survive the goliath flames that decimated my home and
community. As if…. How does a person comb through an apocalyptic pile of ash in
search of …heirlooms? It feels like a sick joke. I have no idea where or how to
begin so I decide to wait for James.

It could be worse. 85 people didn’t make it out when the winds blew through
Paradise. I always thought it was tempting fate to give a town that name. It’s a
tragic irony that the entire place burned, completely, to the ground. Paradise
Lost.

Twenty-nine days is an eternity when you are living in the haunting. I wonder if
the people of Paradise are still living it. If they still smell smoke? It’s in our
clothes, our hair, the few possessions that we managed to cram into our vehicles
before the voluntary evacuation warning became mandatory. It’s in our throats, our
tastebuds, our nostrils.

Hannah cries when the smoke gets strong, and for her books. I cry for Hannah's
books too. I cry for a lot of things when I am alone in the shower, especially for
skin and hair that don’t reek of smoke. I scrub and scrub until my skin is raw, but
it’s still there. The psychiatrist called it “phantosmia.” “It’s an olfactory
hallucination.” Whatever. All I know is I smell smoke. Constantly.

For 29 days I have been walking around in this smokey, internally unhinged stupor,
t