What We Take

by Karinya Ghiara

If your house were on fire and you could only take three things, what would they be and why?

Between first days of school and summer camp orientations, I had already encountered this icebreaker a half dozen times by the start of fifth grade. Despite having heard stories of fires in nearby towns, and even smelling the remnants of acrid smoke carried by the California wind, I knew this was meant as a light-hearted thought exercise—that you were not supposed to actually imagine that a fire would annihilate everything not on your list. I knew it was about the favorite, not the essential.

Maybe that’s why this icebreaker always seemed more effective for kids than adults. At ten years old, I could fully commit to this question as a personality test, unencumbered by any official emergency supply kit checklists. I could craft the perfect trio of items to seem both smart and fun, secure in the knowledge that I was too young for anything I said or did to really matter. But adults, especially parents, do not have that luxury; when faced with danger, every action becomes significant.

When the landline rings at 3 a.m., answer it.

Listen to your friend’s breathless voice as she tells you to turn on the TV, to open the curtains, to look.

Tell your ten-year-old to stay in bed, to remain calm, to let mom figure it out, even though she doesn’t need her glasses to see the glow seeping through the window like an incongruous sunrise.

As she jumps out of bed and begins to panic, tell her you have time. Tell her that your friend was just giving you a warning, that you have not yet received the official call from the city announcing evacuation orders.

When the phone begins to ring again, tell her it will all be okay, and hope she doesn’t notice your hand shaking as you pick up.

As your daughter runs to her room to pack, grab whatever is closest to you: the laundry you never got around to folding, the work laptop you forgot to charge, the stack of library books you need to return. 

Throw these items into the car, call your dog to jump into the backseat next to your daughter, and drive.

Icebreakers aside, in school fire drills, we had been taught to leave everything behind. If a fire alarm went off, we were to immediately get into a single-file line in alphabetical order and head to the field next to the playground to await further instructions. 

Of course, when fire drills actually happened, we were usually too busy shoving our fingers into our ears to shut out the blaring noise and trying to one-up each other with increasingly exaggerated expressions of faux distress to even think about grabbing anything. But once we got to the field, we would inevitably become bored at having to wait for all of the rooms to be searched for stragglers and would wish we had managed to bring something, however small, to keep us occupied.

What I, as a ten-year-old, brought the first time a fire threatened my house and I needed to evacuate: a bright blue, quarter-sized yo-yo.

When you reach your friend’s house, be so thankful that you had somewhere to run. 

Tuck your daughter into the extra bed in your friend’s daughter’s room, and tell her to pretend this is the impromptu sleepover you would normally never allow.

For the next few days, avoid going outside, where the skies are a dusty red as if you’d just put on tinted sunglasses and your eyes haven’t had enough time to adjust. 

When you do have to go outside, to take the dog out or to grab more clothes from the car, try not to breathe in the charred air, even though at times it smells enough like a barbeque that you could trick yourself into thinking this was your friend’s annual 4th of July picnic. 

Play games to distract your daughter, since school is canceled until the blaze is more contained. Briefly wish you lived somewhere with snow days instead.

Listen when your daughter points out that it does almost look like it’s snowing outside, the ash coating everything in a soft white that you can almost let yourself believe would be cold to the touch. Allow yourself to appreciate the beauty in this, even as it results from utter destruction. 

When your daughter starts calling your home phone because someone told her that if it still rings, that means the house is still there, do not think about what you will do if the line is dead. Even though you are not sure where she heard of this, or if it is even true, call a few times yourself, just in case. 

At the time, the whole thing seemed almost fun.

The yo-yo was quickly forgotten as I discovered the Nintendo Wii, which had just been released the year before and which my friend had recently gotten as a birthday present. While we couldn’t go outside without our eyes and lungs burning, inside the house we battled on virtual tennis courts and baseball fields. Although the Halloween dance at my elementary school was canceled, in the living room we swayed our hips to perfect our golf swings and pumped our arms to practice our boxing.

We understood what was happening, had seen flames scale a distant mountain from the living room window, but could not actually contemplate the magnitude of loss that was possible. We wanted our houses to be okay, of course, but we also wanted to reach Pro status in Wii Sports Bowling, our fear transformed into a giddy excitement. 

The danger seemed so far away, and the whole thing felt like an exciting diversion from our quiet, suburban lives. Our parents told us not to worry, and so, with Wii remotes in hand, we didn’t. 

When you are finally allowed to return home, take a deep breath and hold your daughter as she lets out tears she didn’t realize she had been holding back. 

For a moment, forget that this is not uncommon, that this will not be the last time, that this will likely not be the closest call. 

Before you unpack the car, look at all of the things you left behind, the things that you condemned to the flames, and be so grateful that you did not have to live with the consequences of what to others can remain a mere hypothetical. Consider how vital all of those non-favorite, non-essential items really are. How the ability to live without something does not make it unimportant. 

Tell yourself that you will be more prepared next time, that you will finally make that folder of important documents, that you will make sure you never let the gas tank get below halfway full in case you need to leave again at a moment’s notice. Tell yourself that this preparation will be enough. 

Pray that if (when) this happens again, you and your daughter will be together. Pray that this memory will be strong enough for her to remember what to do, to remember what you did, but not so strong that she can’t enjoy the early morning light.

Throughout the next few years of middle school, I kept an eye on the news every fire season. As I read the scrolling lists of endangered cities, I felt a terrible relief that my town, at least, had been spared this time. 

As the years passed, I felt the memory of the evacuation start to fade, began to convince myself that fire and lightning must have more in common than heat, that near devastation couldn’t strike so close more than once. 

Then, during the last few months of my junior year of high school, I was forced to remember. 

At the end of my AP U.S. History exam, the proctor announced that a fire had broken out in a canyon near my dad’s house. I drove toward the looming plume of smoke even though every instinct in my body told me to drive away. My dad and I evacuated to my mom’s house only for a second fire to break out along the road we drove down only minutes prior. 

I watched black clouds fill the sky, making midnight out of 2 p.m. I once again saw an approaching halo, but this time I could make out tendrils of flame.

In that moment, preparation was meaningless. I stood there, paralyzed, until some unseen force compelled me to take nothing, to run to my dad’s car again as fast as I could, to only look back to make sure my mom’s car was following. 

The drive to the family friend’s house felt hauntingly familiar, and I felt scratch turn to scar. There was no easy reassurance; our landline had long since been disconnected.

Containment came too slowly, but eventually the flames near my dad’s house died down enough for my school to announce that it was still holding prom, despite having canceled classes. 

I hesitated, still holding my breath, but then I remembered that I had thrown my prom dress into the car the morning before my AP exam, discovered it had remained there this whole time. 

In the middle of everything, I met my friends for a photo shoot. We gushed over dresses, joked about the flattering golden light, did our best to forget for those few hours. 

Those photos ended up on the news as part of a story on one member of our group, who had watched his (thankfully vacant) house burn down on a TV in our theatre classroom only days before. They called it a sign of resilience; we knew that was an imprecise synonym for escapism. 

As we lined up to enter the rented limo that would take us to the Children’s Museum where the prom was being held, I looked up to see flecks of ash starting to drift down like snowflakes all around us. I felt the urge to open my mouth, to catch destruction on my tongue like a piece of chocolate. As we began to drive, the taste of burning lingered.

Published June 13th, 2024