Screen Shot 2018-11-13 at 6.54.20 AM — Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. People trying to get away from the flames, their homes, their communities. If Trump hadn’t ruined the word “sad,” that’s what I’d say this was.

I watch the fires in California rip through the canyons like souped-up race cars in a drag race. Sparks fly and the deadly and fiery glow dips in and out of a smokey haze. These flames are like Roadrunner on Speed with a chaser of Adderall washed down with a super-size Coke. They’re Usain Bolt fast. They’re no match for the bravest firefighters. It’s as if they’re saying, “Go head, bring it.”

Malibu holds a special place in me. I spent three weeks there when I was an about to be senior in high school, with my sister who lived in an apartment on PCH that was on stilts above the ocean. It was magical. More than 40 years later, this past May, we went back to Malibu and rented an amazing house in one of the Canyons there, for Jake’s graduation. That house had burned down years before and been rebuilt, and from what Jake can tell, it looks like it might be going down again. I texted the Air B&B owners and told them we were carrying them in our hearts. All she sent back was a heart and a prayer emoji. Ugh.

The Malibu house we rented for Jake’s graduation. We fell madly in love with this place. We all wanted to stay and never go back to our real lives.

Ally appreciating the view from the house we fear might be gone.

Fire has always made me afraid. I had a brief visitation with it about 10 years ago, right before Christmas. In seconds the candles I lit near swags of greenery on my mantle went up while in the kitchen, I artfully placed appetizers on platters for my dinner party of eight. One of my guests saved the day, and probably my house, by tearing the beautifully set table’s cloth from its perch and stamping out the flames. The entire house was filled with smoke, the firemen busted in like mobsters. I sobbed and drank a lot of vodka before deciding the 20 pounds of filet must be cooked and eaten. In just that small amount of time and those few rabid flames, I lost a lot, but what I could have lost is what really made me cry.

So I cannot wrap my brain around the idea that people are losing the houses they’ve made into homes, friends, neighbors, all that makes up a community. I don’t seem to have the imagination to create this horror show in my head. I watch, I look at pictures, but something in me says “No, how could that possibly happen.”

But of course it can, and it is happening as we speak. Someone just like you, with all their dreams and aspirations, all their accomplishments and hopes and memories are being forced to get down to what’s really valuable.

And that’s what surfaces for me. Suff is just that. Possessions are no match for people. If I walked out of my house with my family and my dog, I’d ultimately be ok. The trappings are pretty, some of them are well-loved and tell stories of another time. Some of them are steeped in memories of what my life has been. But what my life, what all our lives really are, is the people we love. It’s as simple as that. If we have those, we have what we need.

Here is a good list of places to send money. And of course, there is always the American Red Cross. I gave to a family I didn’t even know on GoFundMe because I saw it on my friend from high school, Frank’s, FB feed (Michael & Linda Weisberg). There is also a general GoFundMe specifically for the fires.

My obsession with California began in this town with this girl, more than 40 years ago.

I just came back from a week in sunny Southern California. A week in which my son graduated from college (another post on that later), my sister had a birthday and I seriously considered how long I have flirted with living in that part of the country.

It’s another world out there. There are mountains and canyons and sunshine, There is healthy food and pretty people and sprawl. There is homelessness like I’ve never seen before and endless traffic.

I visited my sister, who lived in Malibu, the summer before senior year of high school. She lived on PCH in a one bedroom with her boyfriend, where the ocean ran under the apartment. You could lay on the living room rug and tan. The deck was over the water. We drove around in a Porsche and an Austin Healey. We went to Disney land. We ate at vegetarian restaurants. We shopped and went to Graumann’s Chinese and the Hollywood sign and Mulholland Drive and God did we laugh. It was the first time I flew on a plane and the first time I saw a palm tree. I was completely and utterly smitten.

I toyed with transferring to UCLA when I was a sophomore in college, but instead came to Boston. It felt like leaving my older parents and the rest of my family was just too hard. I had a boyfriend in college who moved there after law school and I thought about moving with him, but in the end, I broke up with him (but not after visiting and having an ovarian cyst burst, which lead to emergency surgery at UCLA medical center and my sister having to come out and bring me to her friend’s house –the original Marlboro man for two weeks to recover). In my 20’s I had another boyfriend who was offered a job there and took it, and I once again considered moving, but in the end I knew I just didn’t like him enough (he was smart enough to break up with me, shortly after moving).

My son is staying in LA to pursue a career in advertising (apply the apple and the tree cliche here and if you know anybody he can talk to, puh-lease let me in on it). If he truly decides to make a life there, to become a guy who travels the 110 and the 405, it might be hard not to at least consider a part-time home in that part of the country. I mean, not one of us wanted to leave when it was time to go home.

For now I am grateful for a spectacular week in Malibu and the idea of making a four-decade California dream an actual possibility.

Tag: malibu

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