Lost Weekends: Quiet grief as Pacific Palisades burns

Photo: Cynthia Magana

I was doing fine. I was checking in with friends. Who is where. But also watching it unfold rather suddenly live on TV.

Then a reporter said, “Gelson’s. It’s gone!” And this… this triggered something.

… Orange popsicles from Gelson’s grocery store after a hike in Temescal Canyon.

… Temescal Canyon, my beloved hiking trail. Yes, the trail is still there, but it’s no longer flanked by tall trees and sagebrush that lead to a huge, wonderful cactus, at least ten feet tall. That’s gone, too.

… Perusing the wall of air fresheners while waiting for my car in the car wash, with tip money in one hand and a popsicle in the other.

These were my Saturdays and Sundays. Living regular old life around Pacific Palisades, California.

… Meandering through the Farmer’s Market to pick up soup and oranges.

… Tucking into the bookstore where I met Tom Hanks (at an event… he didn’t meet me there for coffee.)

… Caffe Luxxe… the coffee shop where I would sneak off to get some writing onto the page. GONE.

Even memories of my headspace flooded back.

Thoughts I was noodling, hangups, heartaches. The flashbacks of LA life in Paris Letters were all written in Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica. All these memories now layered with ash.

Photo credit: Thought Catalog

I’m being overly dramatic. That’s how I feel I am being. I’m being ridiculous.

Me… invalidating my own grief, making it not count somehow because I didn’t lose a house in the fire like my friends did.

This week, I’ve walked around my life doing the usual things, mittened and layered, and in conversation with people who don’t have fires top of mind. “Oh yes, that California fire and all those celebrities who lost their homes.”

Yeah, a few celebrities lost their homes, but THOUSANDS of regular people lost their homes, and glib comments about haves and have nots are sad and mean.

People lost their homes.

Pets lost their homes.

Wild animals lost their homes.

And a small part of me lost a village.

So I’ve been walking around astounded at the fires, then astounded when I watch the news and some irrational and irritating political story is the headline instead of the fires. No thanks, Apple News, for your Local feature of mediocrity. It’s an odd kind of lonesomeness.

Today my kid didn’t eat all her salad. Fine. Whatever. But she didn’t eat the tomato. And this… this triggered something.

When I first moved to LA, I went to the nearest grocery store and bought a beautiful red tomato. Ah yes, I thought, THIS is why I moved to California. Local lovely tomatoes everywhere.

The tomato was as horrible as the bland tasteless tomatoes we get in the middle of winter here, shipped from California.

I felt duped by LA. I thought you were special. What is this terrible tomato doing here… in Santa Monica!

These days, I dish out bigger bucks for better greenhouse tomatoes, still shipped from California, but there have been advances in tomato tech, and they’ll do. They aren’t as good as fresh from your own garden but it’s winter so some flexibility is required.

I picked those uneaten tomatoes out of the salad and pushed the seeds out and into a strainer. I washed them to remove the outer seed coating. I found a planter and soil.

I planted the seeds.

I know they will grow. Tomatoes can’t help themselves.

I’ll watch them sprout and put them on a sunny windowsill to fret about them until April.

By then they will be weak so I’ll replant them in bigger pots and fret until the last frost of May.

I’ll plant them and fret whenever the temperature dips in June.

I will have tomatoes by July.

I’ll do all these things because somewhere deep in my DNA, I know I am suffering. I see my grief as a normal and necessary human experience that makes me feel wobbly and sensitive. This wise sage within observes addict behaviour: an inability to stop watching videos of the fire, to keep checking who has marked themselves safe and who hasn’t. Texting. Emailing. Obsessing when a call doesn’t go through.

It’s because I care, I’ll say, to justify my inability to look away from the screen.

But my inner sage knows better. She sees I’ve become unmoored and rudderless. What I need is grounding. Literally. From the ground. These tomato plants will give me a place to go, if only to the sunny window at the far corner of my house. Something to check on.

Photo credit: Theodor Sykes

I will plant these California tomatoes in my own garden far, far away from California. They will be watered with rain, they will stay on the vine until the day we eat them. They will be sweet and tangy. They will be better.

I will fix this one little California problem.

I will heal this one little California hurt.

And perhaps, with time, I will feel like I’m standing on a little more solid ground.

Janice

PS I considered making this post my February Cottage Letter, but it seemed more timely and widely relevant to place it here. Plus, it’s kind of a bummer and my Cottage Letters are meant to be a delightful letter received in the mail. Thank you to all who subscribed so far. I have 35 places left for the January letter, then it will be closed to new orders until the February letter, so if you want the letter shown below subscribe now in my Etsy Shop.

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