I was in the car that morning heading toward the Valley when I saw the dark plume roiling in aggressively expanding billows against the Wedgwood blue of the sky above Old Topanga Canyon. Arlene, one of the school secretaries, handed me a blue form. Will, my not-quite 8-year-old son, walked quickly down from the upper playground where the children had massed on the blacktop, his eyes huge with unease as they searched me out.
Caity was right behind him, balancing a rolling mess of papers, pencils, crayons. In the minute it took us to drive home, the smoke cloud had gotten bigger and closer. I set out juice and snacks for Will and Caity while I tried to decide what to pack in the trunk of the Honda for what looked like an imminent evacuation.
The first few items were easy: three years of notes and the finished chapters of the book I am writing, a file of precious letters, research for a future project. Will unhooked the Macintosh so that we could save the information on the hard drive. After that, what? I have a steel lockbox for important papers. I have read that in a fire you should make sure your insurance papers are safe. No problem there. If this 1,square-foot, unheated, wood-clapboard rented house were to burn, everything I own would burn with it--with no financial recourse.
Or pots and pans. Or lamps. Or a kitchen table. Banishing that thought, I contemplated my books. The walls of the tiny room that I use as an office are lined with shelves holding more than a thousand books. I am acquisitive about very few things, but books are my weakness.
I have anthropological texts and paperback classics from garage sales. I packed none of the books. I was too rattled to know where to begin. Instead, I thought about what to pack for my son. He was outside playing with Caity. A minute or two ago I had asked him what it was he wanted me to pack and he had looked at me astonished. In his room, I stared at Legos, matchbox racers, a Nerf bow and arrows. What would give him the most emotional ballast if we lost it all?
