Reporting Forward Progress Stopped

On her way home from work at around 6 p.m, my wife, Patricia texted me an Alert message she received from a neighbor on NextDoor, our local social media platform.

“Evacuation for fire in Greenbrae – Los Cerros, Vista Grande, Corte Cordova, Corte Dorado, Corte Patencio.  Go!”

The “Go!” in the Alert got my attention, When my cell rang and Patricia instructed me to put the dogs in the car and leave the house, I did as she said, immediately.  I took nothing, just Sadie and Picasso.

As I walked onto our street to get in my car, I smelled traces of smoke in the air. This reminded me of the devastating Sonoma County fires last October.  In Marin, we choked on particle infused air for two weeks.  How rapidly whole neighborhoods just north of us had burned out of control; by the time these fires were extinguished 42 people died and over 8600 structures were destroyed, with damages exceeding 1 billion dollars.  I allowed myself just a moment to feel the fear.  What would it be like to lose our home, our possessions, our pets?

Our house sits on a steep hillside, at the end of Tioga Lane, a very narrow windy road with two blind spots. “Slow down,” Patricia admonishes me whenever she is a passenger in my car, no matter how slow I am going.  The street safely accommodates a single vehicle traveling one direction at a time, so often there is another car or truck headed right for you.  Sometimes you can see it coming, other times, not.

Usually both drivers stop to engage in a negotiation where one driver invariably makes way for the other and no one falls off the hillside. For reasons unknown to me, people don’t use their garages and park on the street, so that also makes it extra fun.  And did I mention scampering deer and scurrying squirrels? Wandering coyotes intimidate the neighbors and someone recently spotted a bobcat, posting warnings on Next Door. Garbage and Recycling trucks have it really bad on Tuesdays. The street can get stopped up easily on good days, so in emergencies with a flee factor, you can’t mess around.

I considered the text Alert, and unsure if Los Cerros, the road into our Greenbrae area, was in flames, took the back way, down the hill on Manor Road. I encountered two screaming fire trucks headed up the hill. I could hear more sirens headed my way.

Several police cars lined Manor Road near Sir Francis Drake.   A policewoman when I rolled down my window and asked her what was going on, nonchalantly told me there was a fire on Visa Grande, the street right above my street.  “How serious?” I asked. She said that firefighters were getting it under control but she encouraged me not to go back just yet.

I drove on, as I had a couple’s therapy appointment in Mill Valley to keep, but I wanted to check my phone to see if there was an update about the progress of the Greenbrae fire.

I received another Alert, this time from the Marin County Alert service, concerning the vegetation fire in Greenbrae on Vista Grande: “IC reporting forward progress stopped. Evacuation order lifted.” 

I paused on the cryptic words “reporting forward progress stopped,” wondering who in the county was responsible for such bad writing, but soon directed my anxiety elsewhere since our home was be safe.  I noted that I needed to call the gardener to weed whack our yard immediately.

Juan, the gardener, an older Guatemalan guy, came over the next day and I surveyed the property with him.  Between discussing trimming the two kinds of overgrown Pyracantha shrubs, and cutting down the small dead oak tree that rests in front of a larger half-dead oak, Juan told me his story. 

He came to California thirty years ago and has worked two to three jobs most of the time.  At the height of running his own small business, he employed a crew of eight.  Juan wants to be retired, but can’t support his family on the Social Security he receives, $900 a month. He doesn’t qualify for Medicare yet, so his monthly healthcare cost for his family is $1200 through Kaiser.  He still hires a few workers and he explained that it is important to pay them a decent wage so they can support their families and also so that they stick around.   “Once I picked up a couple of day workers I didn’t know and we did a job at a very large house.  When we finished, they looked at me and suggested that we return to rob the rich people.”

“What do you think about what the United States is doing at the border, detaining children in cages and separating families,” I ask Juan.  This immigration horror unfolding is on my mind and is breaking my heart. I had a scare yesterday, unsure if our house would burn to the ground.  But having to leave your home because of violence and poverty, then having your children taken from you, as your own fate is equally precarious – this reality for people seeking asylum outrages and saddens me.

“Life is hard,” he sighs. 

“What this country is doing is wrong, so wrong, Baby jails,” I lament.  The voice recording released in the media of infants crying, and children calling for their papi’s and mommies, plays in a loop in my head. I am shell shocked by the cruelty, inhumanity, and trauma inflicted on people, on children and their parents fleeing dangerous, untenable situations with nothing.  My Jewish trauma genes activated, I think of concentration camps and families divided and sent to their deaths.  

“Yes, life is hard,” Juan repeats.

“We have to do something to stop this,” I say. “The political agenda of Donald Trump and the Republicans in control of the Senate and House is not just to stop ‘illegal immigration,’  it is to stop immigration period.  People deserve the opportunity to make their lives in this country.  We must be decent and kind to each other.” 

Our eyes meet and then we resume our discussion about whether to trim the Oleander bushes that have grown out of control.   He’ll be back with his worker in a day or two.

That night, when I return from an immigration protest rally in San Rafael and my Tai Chi class, Patricia and I have a stupid fight about whether or not Juan should cut the pink and white flowering poisonous Oleander now, or wait until the fall.  I retreat to bed, angry and sad from my day. 

“Wake up, wake up, honey,” I tell Patricia this morning at six.  “You must go outside before the next Alert and cut me a bouquet of fresh Oleander.”

She rolls over, but not before I detect a laugh.