My father-in-law suffered a stroke just a few days after early January’s citywide firestorm began. Needless to say, this family emergency made a stressful time even more chaotic.
My family and I live in the San Gabriel Valley, about nine miles south of the deadly Eaton fire, so we were not in immediate danger, but like many people across our county, we watched ashes fall and the air grow thick with smoke. My kids’ schools stayed closed for three days. Meanwhile, as the first raged, my wife, Emi, traveled back and forth between home and the hospital that was housing my father-in-law.
Blindsided by grief over their grandfather’s sudden illness, my 10-year-old son, Skye, and 15-year-old daughter, Eka, simultaneously were dealing with anxiety over the wildfires. While I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all better, Emi and I did learn some instructive lessons about quelling their worries that I’d like to share.
Educating and empowering through open dialogue
My wife and I explained to our kids about how frequent wildfires occur in Southern California, and how if we — community, city and state governments — all work together to prepare for a safer future, we can design our homes and landscaping in ways that are much more fire resistant.
Discussions about improving policies and fire-resistant housing can be complex, but we tried to explain these concepts to our kids slowly over a few days. One day when my daughter was deeply depressed, I told her that her grandfather had just turned 90 and that strokes can be more common for people at his age.
Since the root of Eka’s depression was twofold, our discussion moved to the raging fires as well. While there is nothing we can do to stop 70-mile-per-hour Santa Ana winds and fire conditions exacerbated by climate whiplash produced from an exceptionally dry year after two unseasonably wet seasons, we can take actions to at least slow fires down, such as planting more drought-resistant California native plants and using architectural elements in our structures that are more fireproof. Talking about these options helped to calm and empower our teen.
Finding wisdom in others’ perspectives
In his book, “The State of Fire,” author and geographer Obi Kaufmann writes extensively about how we can have a more cooperative relationship with fire. He urges us to combine traditional ecological knowledge with scientific innovation.
“The cost of implementing such infrastructural design is high,” Kaufmann writes, “but following a fire catastrophe, the cost of not having done so is surely higher.” This conversation begins to be more academic and science-centric, but some of it made sense to my teenage daughter.
Reaching out to community has long been one of my parenting strategies. I spoke to Risa Williams, a mom, therapist and the author of “The Ultimate Anxiety Toolkit,” about having these difficult conversations with our children. “Try to explain what’s happening in an age-appropriate way,” she told me. “Sometimes, it’s good to plan out what you are going to say by talking it through with your partner or friends first, or it can be something you talk about with a therapist who can help you.
“Ask how your kids are feeling and acknowledge their feelings, giving them a lot of space to talk about how they’re feeling with you,” Williams said. My wife and I followed Williams’ advice, talking with our children over several evenings about the realities of the fires and their grandfather’s health.
Still, the mood remained heavy for more than a week. Her grandfather’s prognosis and the persistent fires took my daughter to a place of something close to existential dread. She’s always been close to her grandfather, and now as a teen she is witnessing life’s vicissitudes and how nothing ever stays the same. She had a presentation to give in English class a few days after her grandfather’s stroke and she wasn’t sure she could do it.
In the midst of the chaos, I, too, started to sense despair. The rollercoaster of events drove me from feeling completely overwhelmed to feeling almost nothing at all. But we gained new perspective when my wife learned that a family friend of more than 40 years had just lost her house in the Eaton fire. As sad as our friend was to lose her home and belongings, she was grateful that she and her husband evacuated safely and made it out alive.
My wife was astonished by her resilience and positive attitude. As my daughter overheard the story, she was astounded and, gradually, empowered. Our friend’s strength inspired our family during a tough week for everyone. Though our friend was the one who lost the house, she taught us what it really means to be strong.
Strength and resilience in adversity
In her bestselling book “All About Love,” bell hooks writes that “we learn compassion by being willing to hear the pain, as well as the joy, of those we love.” Through this process, we actualize love as an action.
This concept connects to the fires and our family situation simultaneously. We see it on a bigger scale in the way that the entire city — volunteers, firefighters, paramedics and other first responders — came together to support those affected by the fires.
Over time, we found that when we listened to our daughter’s and son’s concerns about their grandfather and talked more in depth about the fires, we gained strength from one another. Though we may have felt powerless about my father-in-law’s weakening health and the wildfires, we felt closer to one another as we shared our hearts.
My daughter’s honest feelings about how she felt awakened me to being more present. I believe we grew closer to one another over those shared evenings of deep communication.
My father-in-law was preparing to enter hospice care just as the Palisades and Eaton fires were 100 percent contained. Our city emerged from what felt like the longest January we’ve ever experienced. Sadly, my father-in-law passed in mid-February. Over the past couple of months, I have felt frustrated for not having all the answers, for not being able to ease all of my children’s hurt and fears, but along the way I have come to accept that in these difficult times, we — family and community — need to stay close and find our way together.
Mike Sonksen is an educator, father, author of “Letters to My City” and native Angeleno.
