From disaster to daylight
Where there’s smoke, there always seems to be a silver lining
By Ellen Snortland 09/17/2009
Satan’s voice must ring prettier than mine right now. I woke up from having inhaled smoke all night from the burning mountains above my home in Altadena. Indeed, when I said good morning to my husband, I sounded like Linda Blair’s possessed character in “The Exorcist.” My lungs are a bit clearer now and hopefully, by the time you read this, the notorious Station Fire will be receding into memory and I’ll be back to sounding like an angel.
Stealing a line from my favorite Sci-fi TV show, “Stargate SG-1,” I can say from experience that, “Cowboy, this ain’t my first rodeo.” This is not my first disaster: I came close to losing my life in another one back in 1972 — the Rapid City Flood that killed 238, a per-capita death rate that exceeds even the Katrina death toll.
At the time I was a student at Allan Hancock College, a community college in Santa Maria. Jack and Carolyn Shouse, a lovely couple who were both teachers in the drama department there, led a group of a dozen students in a tour of operas and theater on the “continent.” Before we left, I made a spontaneous decision to visit my parents in Rapid City, SD, for a few days before we left for London. It turned out to be a life-altering — and saving — decision.
Long story short, the neighborhood we lived in was hit very hard. Out of 27 people in our enclave, seven people survived. Three of those survivors were me and my parents. Since neither of my parents knew how to swim, I ended up having to pull them to safety since I was a Red Cross-trained lifeguard. If I’d not taken that side trip home before my “grand tour,” my parents probably would have died.
Anyway, at the risk of veering too far into “cliché-ville,” the collateral benefits of disasters are many. Granted, they are not benefits one would normally seek out. And I suppose the real trick to these benefits is to generate them without coming close to losing everything, including your life.
What I learned in the flood, and was reminded of with our recent fires:
• Nothing matters other than your health and other people and pets. The rest is crap.
• For those things that are not really crap, there are people standing by to help.
• Creating an inventory of what really matters to you is a good exercise, even if you aren’t afraid of dying. As I “inventoried” the material things I care about, they boiled down to other people’s artwork, writing or activism that I also care about, such as paintings, Amelia Earhart’s signature on her first book, a first-edition book by Eleanor Roosevelt with her autograph, etc.
• Listen to your animals! If a cat or dog is acting funny, don’t scold them — listen. They know things, smell things and hear things that we don’t.
• People are incredibly generous with each other when there’s a threat.
• Home is where the heart is — I told you this would veer into “cliché–ville.” But it’s TRUE! As long as I have my hubby and doggies, I’m good.
• There are only a certain number of things you can actually control. Ultimately, the only control you truly have under dire circumstances is over your own actions.
• Whether the current problem is fire, mud, water, wind or earthquake, I love California and there’s nowhere else I’d rather live.
• There’s nothing like a good disaster to remind you of your own mortality; stop waiting for “someday.” You need to write that book, sing that song, smell those roses that Pasadena is so famous for, surf that wave. My Dad regretted nothing except that he hadn’t taken the time to write about his life.
Finally, this column is dedicated to my neighbor and surrogate mom, Mignon Henriques, who passed away on Aug. 26 — 26 years to the day after her beloved husband Keith Henriques died. Also known as Minnie, she epitomized the kind of person who didn’t need a disaster to appreciate life and living. Many people in Altadena and Pasadena knew Minnie. She was a central figure at Neighborhood Church for many years, as well as in Planned Parenthood. Minnie was a brilliant writer. I first got to know her well when she was a student in my Writers’ Workout. I often thought how much my own father would have loved the class and Minnie, and would have loved to hear her stories of growing up in a well-off Jewish community in Kingston, Jamaica. Minnie’s patois and love of the Jamaican culture was always around her. You could smell the tropical nights and the big-band sounds while everyone danced under the stars in her prose.
Ah, Minnie … I miss her. Fortunately, we will always have her stories because she put them on paper — and recorded some of them onto tape, too.
Ellen is a writing coach in Altadena. Contact her at snortland.com.
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