I’ve not been myself since Thurs., July 26.
I blame the Carr Fire and its smoky straitjacket.
As I type, I pause to listen intently to a helicopter overhead, a sound I used to associate here in Redding with cops in pursuit of criminals who’ve ripped off something and are on the run. Now I associate that sound with fires. Likewise, if I hear a siren, my heart leaps, wondering if they’re fire engines heading to a new blaze.
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Fight or flight.
A therapist friend of mine says I’m not alone, that she thinks the entire county needs Xanax.
I trace my first episodes of what I’m calling Carr Fire Psychosis to that dreadful Thursday, when I was not worried in the least, working on my computer, keeping up with fire news about those other poor places that always get smacked with wildfires, areas like French Gulch and Shasta. I wouldn’t be one of those people who overreacted and panicked. I believed in letting the evacuation system work. I trusted that if, by some very bizarre long shot, my urban neighborhood needed to evacuate, I’d get the message in plenty of time to get my things and leave.
I hope to God there is no next time, but if there is, I will no longer put my faith in any evacuation system. Rather, I will rely upon my own personal hair-on-the-back-of-my neck and gut-feeling alert system. I’ve heard too many stories of people whose homes burned to the ground in the Carr Fire, and they either never got an evacuation notification or it arrived after the house was gone. If they’d waited for the call, they’d have died in the fire.
Around 9 p.m. on that Thursday I walked to the alley behind my house and saw a wall of shimmery red glow that reached high in the sky – which I now believe was Sunset Terrace – that looked like I could touch it. Ash was raining down.
That was the first moment it dawned upon me that I could be in danger. Earlier in the day – primarily to appease my freaked-out sister – I’d packed a go-bag that held things like my passport, checkbooks, stuff like that. But I really hadn’t packed anything of significance. Why would I? I mean, come on. Wildfire inside the city proper? You want to talk about crazy? That’s insane!
When I realized my neighborhood could be in danger, I was just grabbing random stuff, sprinting it to the car like a wild woman. I was cursing the fact that I stored so many photo albums in a heavy Hawaiian wood trunk that I couldn’t lift alone, which I left behind without more than a second look. I was kicking myself for being our family’s self-appointed kin-keeper, and that I have that huge footlocker full of genealogy research I’ve collected since I was 19. With the same kind of adrenaline that gives a mother the strength to lift a car off a toddler, I lugged that entire footlocker down my front steps and into the car without stopping once.
Something happened in my brain that Thursday as I prepared to leave my house, my car outside, packed to the gills, waiting for my evacuation. I stood in my 80-year-old home’s entryway and looked around at this place I’d painstakingly remodeled since last summer when I first bought this sweet house. I acknowledged that this might be the last time I saw my home, and that it could burn to the ground. Amazingly, I felt at peace with that. In a weird way, I still do.
Mentally, I said goodbye to the majority of my belongings that I left behind, which was pretty much everything except those things that I’d crammed into my car.
I have spoken to others who’ve done this, too, but for some reason, I didn’t pack things in any of the huge suitcases I own, which was stupid. Mainly, I used plastic bins and shopping bags.
When I arrived to my daughter’s place and surveyed what I’d brought, I couldn’t believe my choices, I mean, other than the truly important stuff, like my family’s art work, such as a pear sculpture made by my sister, which I seat-belted like a beloved passenger; my week-long driving companion.
And I brought along the portrait of my mother, whose untroubled face stared blankly at me from the back seat.
Yes, I’d grabbed boxes of family photos I’d recently sorted, and business papers (but not the tax extension stuff I’ve been working on for months: Dear IRS, the Carr Fire ate my tax papers …). But I brought crazy stuff, like every pair of underwear I own, but not one bra, other than the one I was wearing. I brought a dress I’ve not worn in years. I brought garden clogs and a pair of suede slip-ons. I brought three pair of jeans, and one top. I brought pajama bottoms.
Basically, that time period was the beginning of, as friend Matt Grigsby would eloquently put it – when I totally lost my shit.
I slept in my clothes the first two nights of evacuation, even though I was in Enterprise, supposedly far from the Carr Fire’s sinister talons. Were we really safe? Why couldn’t the Carr Fire just jump the river below Highway 44 and race south up Bechelli Lane? We already knew what this beast was capable of. I wouldn’t put anything past that sadistic monster.
While evacuated, I ate like an alcoholic toddler. I was supposed to have had my grandkids the weekend of July 27, but the Carr Fire derailed that plan, so my son and daughter-in-law wisely whisked the kids away to Sacramento to stay at an aunt’s (before Sacramento’s air was as bad as it is now). And then my daughter packed up and headed south, too. That left me at my daughter’s apartment alone, pretty much cut off from everyone I knew.
I had bought the kids’ former sleepover food, like hot dogs and Neopolitan ice cream sandwiches, as well as bagged salads, and adult beverages, like Bogle Chardonney and some IPAs. That’s what I ate for four days before venturing out to the store.
I didn’t shower for three days, which might seem a bit TMI, but as long as I’m disclosing, there’s no point holding back now. Even though I was staying in an apartment, evacuation felt a bit like camping. Showering just didn’t seem a high priority. Besides, I was holed up in that apartment, working on the website (which was crashing from the heavy traffic) around the clock, from smoky sunup to smoky sundown, then falling into bed in the wee hours of the morning, then starting all over again the next day. The days were a blur.
The movie, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” came to mind.
I don’t remember how many nights it was into the evacuation when I posted on Facebook my confession of what I’d had for dinner one night: beer, and ice cream sandwich(es). I said that felt about right.
To my shock, that opened the floodgates to people’s responses and admissions that others were eating similar bizarre combinations, things like Champagne and Ding Dongs, or gin and tonics and Sara Lee cakes. More than 100 people listed one example after another. The common denominators were alcohol, sugar and carbs, and plenty of them. Dopamine, meet brain. Brain, meet dopamine.
There are three preliminary questions psych folks ask people to help them determine someone’s general mental state: Person, place and time.
Who are you? Where are you? What’s the date?
Since the Carr Fire, I’ve flunked two out of three of those in the same day, and one of them (the date) on a regular basis, partly which I can chalk up to being self-employed, which means every day is a work day, and T.G.I.F. is a foreign concept, but still. Come on. What day is it? How difficult is that? Apparently, it’s difficult for many of us, because I continue to run into people since the Carr Fire, who, during conversations, are mistaken about what day it is. Mostly, we don’t correct one another. We understand.
It makes me feel better.
The most rattling moment was when I attended one of the early Carr Fire press conferences, and I introduced myself as Doni Greenberg to a Cal Fire guy. What. The. Hell! I haven’t had that name since 2010!
A few times I’ve had to really stop and think to remember what day it is, or what day something happened since the Carr Fire.
Thank goodness, I’m home from evacuation, but I’m still not feeling entirely rational. And my heart still races at the sound of sirens and helicopters.
When I’m out around town and encounter someone I’ve not seen since the CF, I gingerly ask, “How are you … and your house?”
I pray they’re fine, because I never quite feel as if my response to those who’ve lost houses – and I know about 35 by now – is ever adequate. I feel lame that I don’t have more comforting words than I’m sorry. I feel ashamed that I still have a house when thousands of people don’t.
In my dining room, there’s a pile of precious things I’d evacuated and brought back inside, but I haven’t been able to put them away, just in case I have to evacuate again.
That scenario might sound irrational, but I beg to differ. To those who think it’s unlikely that the Carr Fire will return to Redding city limits, I have only to remind you of Mary Lake, Keswick, Stanford Hills, and Sunset Terrace, to name a few subdivisions that were eviscerated by the Carr Fire.
I’m not a big cryer, but you wouldn’t know it based upon how many times I’ve left a comment on FB or ANC where I’ll respond about something posted, and I’ll say, “That made me cry.”
Someone’s photo of their charred house. I cry.
A photo of sleeping firefighters. I cry.
The photo of Small Fry, the rescued kitten, puffy eyes squeezed shut, its paws bandaged. I cry.
The photo of what remains of Shasta, and Whiskeytown, and so many neighborhoods. I cry.
A thank-you firefighter sign. I cry.
Volunteers rehab a house for fire victims. I cry.
It doesn’t take much.
I’m such a messy smorgasbord of emotions that I could audition for a room at Snow White’s place. I’m jumpy, I’m cranky and I’m weepy. But I know I have a lot of company. You can tell by the erratic way people are driving, that their minds are elsewhere. I’ve seen people break down and weep in the post office as they pick up mail intended for addresses that no longer exist.
The thing is, here I am talking about how the Carr Fire has stressed me out, but the truth is, I’m fine. More than fine. Nobody looted my place while I was gone. The power stayed on, so I didn’t return home to rotten food and maggots, as some people I know.
Most of all, the Carr Fire didn’t take my life, or a loved one’s. It didn’t destroy my home.
So if I feel this spun out while I am still lucky enough to have a home, I can only imagine how people are fairing who lost theirs to the Carr Fire. They’re my heroes. I’m a wimpy lightweight.
Everywhere I go around the north state, I see tense people on the verge of tears or tempers. And no matter where I go, nearly every conversation I overhear has something to do with the Carr Fire.
This week, I’m pulling myself back from the cliff of Carr Fire insanity.
Sunday I cooked my first real meal since the Carr Fire. It felt cathartic.
Yesterday, I had my grandkids over for the first time since the Carr Fire so rudely rescheduled our summer sleepover. When they arrived, and my 5-year-old granddaughter asked about the pile of stuff in my dining room, I explained that I’d packed it up for evacuation.
My 7-year-old grandson covered his ears. “No more fire talk!” he said.
I took his words to heart, and then I took the kids to a movie, even though I had to push aside a slight feeling of anxiety that some fire news might break while I was unplugged from technology, sitting in a theater. My break – in the middle of a weekday – felt like a guilty indulgence when all around me is suffering and strife as oppressive as the smoke that permeates everything. I can blame it completely on the children. I did it for them, don’t you know.
Yesterday, I hauled my genealogy trunk from my car back into the house, mainly to make room for the kids’ car seats. I rehung some art, put away boxes of photos, and returned my mother’s portrait to the guestroom where she belongs.
Sure, I still have a go-bag that contains my passport and other papers, at the ready. Crazy? Maybe. Maybe not. These are crazy times, and it could take some time before we feel normal again.
In the meantime, I’m being easy with myself, and taking baby steps, starting with today, which I’m pretty sure is Wednesday, here in Redding, and my name is Doni Chamberlain.
I think I’ll be OK.
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