Home Again

                              

It's been six months since the Eaton Fire tore through our town.  Caught off guard, I had nothing sentimental or important on me when I drove Zoe to her grandparents' house that night to avoid the high winds that were howling relentlessly and wreaking havoc already.  We saw the bright orange fire in the mountains when we got onto the freeway overpass, and I will never forget what it looked like, sprawled out before us, dangerously near.  We thought that maybe some people living near Eaton Canyon would lose their homes, but had no idea that it would come to us, right up to our fence, lighting up the palm tree over our back yard, and engulfing our neighbors' houses.  It still is really hard to process how unreal the whole thing was, even upon seeing blocks upon blocks of flat, dirt lots lined with sandbags, dotted with sprouting weeds, on the way to the park and the library. 

Yet, here we are, back in our home.  Sometimes, it feels like we'd never left, as we go through our daily grind and live life like we had been before.  Here and there, I catch myself thinking: wow, we're actually back.  In the midst of the most mundane things, like fixing Zoe's breakfast, looking for a misplaced stuffed animal, restocking the toilet paper, and putting away clean laundry into the closet and dressers, it hits me how we almost lost all of this.  I feel so relieved, that we have our routine back, especially during summer as I am off work and Zoe is only in school part-time.  We've been baking, crafting, playing games, reading books, having slow mornings for the last few weeks, just soaking in the home and the quality time that we have together at this point in our lives.

Home Stretch

It is our final night in Alhambra.  For the past three months, we have been staying in a quiet back house on a serene, tree-lined street—a welcome landing pad after a few uncertain weeks after the Eaton Fire.  I remember moving in at the end of February with a sigh of relief.  It was finally a place that felt homey and safe—we were right next to a park, surrounded by single-family homes, on an uncrowded residential street. Target, Trader Joe's, and Costco are a few minutes away.  The place itself has three bedrooms, spacious closets, updated cabinetry... all that's missing are a dish washer, dressers, and a bathtub... but whatever!  Wes promptly added some WD40 to the squeaky bedroom doors and taped up some cheap paper blinds in the window.  We bought a toaster oven, brought over our coffee grinder, and filled the freezer with meat, chicken nuggets, and two gallons of ice cream—strawberry and black sesame—from Fosselman's.   We parked Zoe's scooter and tricycle inside of the garage.  We definitely geared up to be here for the long haul.  I cannot believe that the time has already come for us to move on, again.

Though we are one step closer to moving back to Altadena and I am so ready to be home again, a part of me feels sad as I sit in this near-empty Alhambra AirBNB living room.  Maybe I'd feel better if we were going straight home—which we're not.  Maybe it's nostalgia for all of the good times that we had here since February.  Maybe it's just the fact that life really settled down for the first time, and things felt "normal," so a part of me feels a sense of attachment to this place and this time.  In the beginning, there was a bit of an adjustment period.  I felt almost invisible to the others who passed us on the wide, flat sidewalks.  They had no idea what we were going through, where we were from.  Most people had already moved on with their lives and were no longer thinking about the fire by the time we moved in.  I kind of wanted people to know, but at the same time I was fine with not talking about it.  As time passed, we became a fixed part of the daily in's and out's of this block.  My car received its inaugural showering of parrot poop.  We started going to the park, ate at the local restaurants, got to know some of the neighbors, met up with friends living in the area, and watched as different groups of renters in the front house came and went.  Zoe is never shy with people, and gained favor with pretty much everyone we met.  She made us that much more approachable, and we are grateful for her outgoing little personality.  I also just feel so fortunate to say that we were able to remain in one place for three months straight, and a great place, at that.

Two Months After the Fire

Zoe's birthday in Irvine

Lunar New Year festival in Arcadia

Valentine's Day in Pasadena

Bracelets by Zoe, all materials gifted

Zoe's most recent drawing of us, hanging on the door in our current place in Alhambra

It's been a bit over two months since the Eaton Fire and we are still displaced.  Earlier this week I came to the jarring realization that I hadn't shaved my armpits since this whole ordeal with the Eaton Fire.  I was standing in the bathroom of our third Airbnb (fourth relocation, if you count the first two weeks at my parents' place in Irvine), just getting ready to dry my hair, when it hit me that I hadn't even checked on my armpits in the year of 2025 yet.  Now, I am not a very hairy person, so I usually just do a quick, dry pass with the razor once every couple of weeks to take care of the stray little hairs poking out.  When I looked under my arms this day, holy moly--I had no idea how kinky my armpit hair could be, once allowed to grow out!  With a mixture of awe and disgust, I got rid of it.  And that's when I realized how long it has actually been, how out of touch I must be with my own needs.

Altadena Strong

It's been a month since the Eaton Fire.  For the first ten days, Zoe and I stayed in Irvine, cocooned by the clean air, grandparent attention, parks, and play dates.  It was our escape.  Then, the time came for us to go back and face reality.  Zoe had to get back into the school routine, for her own sense of normalcy.  As for me, not only did I have to get back into work mode, but also go out to our destroyed neighborhoods and take it in with my own eyes.  On the morning that evacuation orders were lifted for our area (January 21st), I dropped Zoe off at preschool for the first time and it was a heartbreaking separation, even though her favorite teachers were right there with her.  The teachers had to hold her away from me as I walked down the hall, waving to her and holding back my own tears while hearing her scream.  Fortunately, the teachers messaged me as I was still sitting in my car in the parking lot, saying that she had settled a few minutes later and was making me a heart out of markers and paper.  My next task was to drive into Altadena for the first time.

As I exited Lincoln, my heart was pounding, anticipating when I would see the first burned home. There was debris on the road from the winds, but I drove past the coffeeshop not far from home and saw people lining up, buying coffee—business as usual.  I saw that the supermarket was still standing, the yoga studio, the gym.  Then, the first burned house came into view, with twisted metal, blackened trees, and cars reduced to misshapen metal.  Then, there were a few homes after that, totally intact.  The big white farmhouse survived.  The one with the Japanese-style bricks was gone.  Maybe some people did what Wes did and saved their houses.. or maybe the fire worked in a weird pattern.  I couldn’t understand how some were unaffected and some were leveled, right next door to each other.  I also wasn’t expecting Lincoln to be fully open, after hearing stories from Wes about the barricades, the National Guard, downed trees and power lines… it was surprisingly easy to pull up to our house.  I felt a mixture of emotions when I saw our house, sitting pretty as it always has, on its trapezoidal lawn, framed by the eucalyptus tree and the Chinese elm, front fence intact.  It truly looked like a slice of heaven, a surreal sight in a landscape of utter devastation.

Feelings of relief, guilt, fear, dejection, and incredulity washed over me.  Unlike what I'd been seeing in the news and hearing from almost all of my neighbors, our house in Altadena looked… untouched, peaceful.  I backed into the driveway, for the first time in what felt like a year, and stepped out.  The sun was warm against my shoulder, the birds were chirping, the grass was actually green. Wes had cleaned and swept every leaf, when he was eliminating the property of more tinder between wind storms.  It was eerie, like it didn't quite belong... didn't fit the narrative of widespread destruction.  It was a page out of an old book edition that was mistakenly reprinted.  I wondered if seeing it made people angry.

The Story of How Our House Survived the Eaton Fire

It has been about two weeks since the Eaton Fire destroyed our town, Altadena.  On the night of January 7th, we were having dinner under a string of solar powered camping lights, which Wes had hung across our dining room in our dark home.  The wind was beating relentlessly against the windowpanes of our old house, little rocks and branches pelted against the glass and the loud sound of every gust sent shivers down my spine.  I tried to play it cool for Zoe.  I showed her how we could shine a flashlight over Magnatile towers to cast colored shadows on the floor, we played hide and seek in the dark, we ate Chinese take-out and cracked opened fortune cookies.  I suggested that we play some board games after dinner, but Wes was on edge, distant, pensive, absorbed in his mental calculations of the immediate future.  This is not new for him--in fact, it's something that often bothers me: his lack of presence in the moment and his constant preoccupation with planning the next steps.  Sensing the all too familiar, yet ominous tension, I snapped at him.  We were approaching the situation from opposite angles, and that made an already uncomfortable situation even more unsettling.  We bickered for a little bit, but then agreed that I should just focus on entertaining Zoe so that he could think, as he was in no position to sit down for a game of Bingo at that moment.  It was clear that we were both worried about the way things were going.  Just as I was deciding to pack an overnight bag to take Zoe to my parents' house so that we could at least get some decent sleep, we found out about the wildfire that broke out in Eaton Canyon, only five miles away.  Wes said that he didn't think that it would blow in our direction.  Then, he took a cursory glance out the back door window and saw the mountains to the East, etched in a bright orange glow.  "Shit," he said.