It was 2007, and my very first week away from home. I had barely tacked a Playbill over my bed in a dorm room at the University of California, Los Angeles, when I heard from my parents. A wildfire was racing through the hills near my San Diego suburb. Just a few days before, I had said a teary goodbye to my parents to start life on my own. Now, they were evacuating — and I was terrified.
Don’t worry about us, they seemed to be saying. Others have it worse.
Nearly two decades later, my first week back in Los Angeles after spending seven years in New York has been consumed by fire, too.
I packed a go bag when the Sunset fire in Hollywood got a little too close. And while I’m a little less terrified now, I’m not sure I should be. There are few things in life more anxiety-producing than refreshing an online fire map, over and over, as you helplessly wait and worry.
It is incredible how every person I’ve spoken to here has so casually dismissed packing up and leaving their homes as something routine. They’re eager instead to discuss how they can help, even as their children — often crammed inside a friend’s spare room — scream in the background.
Don’t worry about me, they seemed to be saying. Others have it worse.
Few people who are not physically here in Los Angeles can feel this fully. When fires rage, we are stressed — and we are scared.
I was reminded of that stress and that fear when I called my parents to tell them I was fine. They didn’t say it. But they didn’t have to. I could hear it in their voices.
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