To Grandmother's House We Go

Fierce Santa Ana winds continue to feed a threatening fire on a Saturday afternoon. A windy Sunday morning finds Dad glued to the television for weather reports while Mom rests from too many busy weeks of theater. There are bathrooms, floors, carpets, laundry and other cleaning to be done, but everyone is moving slowly, especially younger ones who have developed sore throats and snivels from ingesting the smoke that is choking out the sun's light from a blue sky less than an hour's drive from home. House work gets cancelled.

We check wind patterns and the location of the fire heading toward us before retiring to bed, self-assured that dried grass, trees and unfortunate structures are still burning at least forty miles away. We grant ourselves one more worry-free night of sleep in our little valley, while at the same time outside, grossly underestimated gusts of wind are staging the scene for a reverse 911 phone call at midnight that cheats us out of our peaceful slumber. It's my turn now to listen to the recording for a mandatory evacuation while hundreds of cars from the nearby development exit past my living room windows on the only road to safety in the early hours of morning.

We've been through this drill before. I pack carefully for the event, though I've nearly convinced myself after zipping up the last suitcase and removing and loading photo albums from closets and pictures from walls, that we'll be safe and sound back home again before nightfall.

This was simply a very unpleasant inconvenience and we'd just have to hang out at Grandma and Grandpa's until this little threat was over.

Besides, Peanut was going to make this whole episode of temporary displacement a whole lot more bearable...until of course, Grandpa decided to feed him a peanut butter nugget.