Sweetie knew there was going to be a problem. She had for the last few days been discussing the weather and a wind event. I was not as impressed. I was looking forward to a class of 2nd graders and the start of the winter semester. After decades in sales, the last few selling insurance…
I had become a substitute after the Covid epidemic.
I think I’ve always had a teacher’s spirit—even when I was a sales rep.
The best part wasn’t closing the deal.
It was that moment when someone really understood what I was trying to show them.
That feeling stayed with me.
I didn’t recognize it fully until I became a teacher, in the three years before the fire.
Even then, it never felt like work.
It felt like kickball, like the magic of the 9, like being right where I was supposed to be.
I felt it again out on the road, in RV camps.
There’s something about finding your spirit—and your life—at the same time.
Especially at 61.
January 7, 2025 was a Tuesday, and I had just secured a class at a school I enjoyed with my favorite age of kids when I noticed two things happening within about an hour of each other. We had always had Santa Ana winds, but these were different. Santa Ana winds gust up to 50 maybe 60 miles per hour and then back down, but these whipped up to 50 and 60 and stayed then gusted to 80. I opened my front door to palm fronds wildly dancing and thought Auntie Em Auntie Em and closed the door and went back to my office.
A little while later I heard the first one, an emergency vehicle racing down Altadena Drive. That wasn’t unusual. Emergency vehicles often used Altadena Drive as the east-west thoroughfare through Altadena. But then one was followed by another. Then three more. Then two more in quick succession.
When I looked east, in the direction they were flowing, I saw what looked like the sunrise.
At five in the evening, the sun rising in the east can’t be a good thing.
I walked to the end of the driveway and looked toward Eaton Canyon. I could see flames—and not just flames, angry walls of them.
