In L.A., the Heartache of Being Home

All week, I’ve been reassuring friends and family across the world checking in over texts, DMs and WhatsApp messages with this: We’re safe <3. But right now in Los Angeles, safety is a provisional state.

At home in Highland Park, my husband and I planned where we might shelter and packed our go bag — several go bags. We stashed passports, some jewelry, stacks of family photos from the late 1990s still in their red Kmart sleeves, diapers and wipes for the baby, and supplements for our elderly dog. We checked our locations against Watch Duty, glanced at group texts and shook off all the false alarms.

On Friday, I came home to find my husband putting away some tools. He’d been busy installing a little coat rack near the front door, right at my daughter’s height. We’d talked about doing this weeks ago, so she could reach her jacket and the bag she takes to day care with her lunch and snacks inside. Her day care in Pasadena is closed. We’re not sure yet when it will reopen. But all week my husband tinkered around the house, taking care of it, the baby and me. He did laundry and cooked dinner and repaired a cabinet and dropped off supplies for a mutual-aid group in the neighborhood.

I wrote We’re safe because that was all that mattered and because it was hard to explain the heartache of loving Los Angeles this week and calling it home. If you were lucky to still be at home, to still have a home, then it was the heartache of packing a go bag, but also putting up new coat hooks. It was the heartache of getting ready to go, and at the same time, getting ready to stay.