Why Did I Think This is Good Idea?

I had a dream last night that my cat, Sebastian, returned home. He was a dusty thing, covered in cobwebs and mewling with annoyance, but otherwise in good shape. I called to my husband, who stood by the garage, that the cat had returned.

“I told you he’d come back!”

I scooped Sebastian into my arms, his fur soft and luxurious to my touch as I walked across the wooden porch to the front door. It was so real, I could feel his purring vibrating against my chest, smell the familiar fresh pine scent in the air, hear the stellar jays screeching, sense the firm redwood deck under my feet. As I swung open my front doors, I stopped in the entryway, staring at the china cabinet. I saw my reflection in its glass doors, holding my dear pet close to my heart and I realized it wasn’t real. It wasn’t even a future vision. This was the past, a place I can no longer return.

It’s been almost five months since my home, and everything in it including Sebastian, burned in the August wildfires. Five months since I last held my cat. Hurricanes are named after people, but wildfires are named for the places they have burned. Yet the fire that consumed every house on my street, and 900+ more on the mountain, doesn’t have a name like that, rather the firestorm that took so much from us is called the CZU Lightning Complex Fire. I will never forget August 16th 2020, 2:00 am, as I stood on my back porch, looking up to the sky, watching the pink and purple lighting flash across the sky like veins of fire. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I still do, even though that porch is now nothing but ash.

According to the “Try Dry” app, lucid dreams are common the first week you give up alcohol and my dream last night is right on time. Given all we’ve been through this year, perhaps Dry January isn’t the best idea, and yet for some reason it feels like its time to feel what has happened. Not that I haven’t felt the loss, I cried everyday for a while. We didn’t just lose our home and my cat, we also lost 75% of our beautiful trees. We loved those trees, and to see so many of them dead under the dwindling winter skies has been quite painful. We also lost two goats. The bees survived. I visit them, and our pets’ grave, twice a week, so I cry quite regularly. Yet I also found myself drinking a bottle of wine a day since I evacuated in the wee hours of the morning with my 19 year-old son and two dogs, thinking I’d be back to get the rest of the animals the next day. The wine makes it easier, like a reward for getting through another day, or a celebration when something goes right.

January is technically the start of a new year, but life reset for me on August 20th 2020, when I found out my home had burned as well as the homes of so many others. They say misery loves company, but at least a dozen of my close friends lost their homes, and that doesn’t count the ones in my neighborhood. It is a calamity I never thought I’d have to see—a burn field in all directions. It’s a fresh start alright, when all you have are the clothes on your back and the few other things you remembered to rescue. Some of my friends were better at this than others, but most of us forgot even the simplest things, like coats and close-toed shoes. It was ninety-eight degrees when I fled my house in a thick blanket of smoke at one in the morning on August 19th 2020. I wasn’t thinking about staying warm wherever I was headed. A few days later, I found myself shivering in my friends’ garage as they kindly served us a covid-safe meal. They noticed how cold we were and loaned us jackets. I’ll never forget it.

Replacing a wardrobe is fun, but also strange when there’s a pandemic. I see dresses and shoes and I wonder, where can I even wear that? I mean, all you really need are yoga pants and a hoodie right now. And yet, I long for beauty and there’s a new me staring at that empty closet. Anything is possible—what look do I want to go for? What fun it is to consider my clothes from a broader perspective than, "when will I wear that?" Rather since I have few clothes I think, "how do I feel wearing this?" All of my clothes fit me now, which is rare. Before the fire I had my skinny clothes, my fat clothes, and then the ones that fit me now clothes. My shape has changed more times in the past twenty years than I can count, but now all those clothes I’ll never fit in again have disappeared and everything fits the body I have now.

Fresh starts are liberating, but they’re also overwhelming. The number of hurdles and gates I have to pass through right now make Hercules’s trials seem trivial. I wish there were only twelve labors ahead of me. From cleaning up your once beautiful sanctuary that is now labeled a toxic wasteland, to getting your insurance money, to finding an architect and builder, to deciding what matters in the new house, to finding shelter in the meantime, well, everyday something is new. No wonder why a bottle of wine a day makes sense. I open one at five each day, sometimes sad, sometimes excited because it’s really not all that bad to be free of everything, but it’s still scary.

The sort of freedom that comes with losing every one of your earthly possessions is vast…literally anything is possible. Have you ever felt that? Sometimes it’s so glorious, you want an expensive bottle of wine to celebrate it. Other times it’s daunting, and Snoop Dog’s 19 Crimes red blend is the way to go. Other times, like when the soils tests fail and you have to call in the debris cleanup folks to scrape AGAIN, and they tell you it will be weeks before they can return and you have to cancel the septic, well, and geotech appointments, well then only a whiskey or two or three will do.

I can’t remember whose idea this Dry January idea was, mine or my husbands? Most days, I think it’s pretty stupid of us to even try. But we’ve made it a week without booze. Even though I wanted that whiskey when the county rejected our soil samples, I will continue to face this most recent setback sober.

Why?

Because I’m in a state I may never again experience—a total loss—a place where everything is being rewritten. I know that wine has a place in my new story, but right now I want to be aware as the plot unfolds, so that this new start is one chosen with consciousness.

I want to craft a new life, not get swallowed by the events of life, even if it hurts. It’s the chance of a lifetime, isn’t it?