Strongly emerging from the slow burn
Lately I’ve been wondering what has happened. Life used to come a day at a time and I could pretty much predict what the next day held.
That all changed the morning of the Camp Fire. As my regular readers know, my family didn’t lose a home, nor were we displaced from ours in Chico, but I had to teach in a borrowed classroom for the remainder of that school year. The borrowed classroom was much better than my tired portable, but I hated it. That sounds ungrateful, but those who lost a home or job in the fire and had to rely on the kindness of others understand that it is possible to be eternally grateful while hating the charity upon which the gratitude is based.
Why did I hate that classroom? Because it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t the one in which I had spent the previous 23 years and its door didn’t open into the quad of my little school where I have spent my entire career. It wasn’t home.
As I think of that unscripted time of frenetic problem-solving, I see the day of the fire as the beginning of something: a slow burn that began as an orange flash on November 8, 2018 — an uncomfortable glare that has smoldered ever since. Our school survived the flames and we returned to our campus in the fall of 2019. Just when we were beginning to get our feet under us again, and the exhausting warmth of recovery had begun to soothe our troubled minds, we had to stop going to school and figure out how to teach and learn without the benefit of proximity.
COVID was not the incendiary event that the Camp Fire had been, but it promised to reignite our struggles and to expand the length and breadth of our recovery. We began to feel the heat of trouble once again but this time it radiated toward us from an indistinguishable direction. And this time, the rest of the world was with us. The Camp Fire was our singular struggle, but in the COVID era everyone everywhere reprised the chorus we had sung loudly and then left behind, “We’re all in this together.”
I think all of us in Butte County know that kind of solidarity can be fleeting. The oneness we all felt on the Ridge subsided when it was clear that government on every level was understandably overwhelmed and every fire victim’s ire turned toward the corporate culprit at the heart of their misery. It wasn’t long before we seemed to be in it for ourselves once again.
Here in Butte County, COVID
is blowing on the smoldering wreckage that remains after two years of tragedy and anxiety, seeking to rekindle a burst of fear and panic. Add to that a culture charged with a new round of civil rights activism, an aggressive army of divisive news media, and way too many politicians who act like they know what they’re doing, but fail to deliver even the most basic levels of care and comfort. It’s enough to drive a person to drink. But I don’t think there’s enough beer to extinguish the familiar glow of our fuse.
As I look back, the smoke that lingers from our slow burn is clearing. Now I see some of the times and places in which people did what needed to be done. They showed up, and they tried their best to help with whatever they could. These aren’t heroes. They are teachers and janitors. They deliver our groceries, our babies, and our dinner. They are moms and uncles. They pay attention to those around them and move their neighbor’s newspaper from the sidewalk to the porch. None of these folks were elected to help, or hired to be a hero. They do what they do because it is nice and it makes the day a little easier for someone else.
As we look forward into a new year, let’s resolve to be more like that. Let’s find the people and situations that need our help and pitch in. Our aid doesn’t have to effect massive change, but it should give a little relief to someone who needs a break. And if you are a person who needs help, please look around and find someone to help you. I guarantee you won’t have to look far, but you may have to look in places you’ve never looked before.