I wake up at six-thirty to helicopters circling overhead. They are loud and the house is shaking. It is the last day of summer break in Western Australia, with a new school year starting tomorrow.
I reach for my phone. A friend who lives around the corner has written, “Hi Bek, I’m sorry to text you at this ridiculous hour but there is a fire at Kings Park. It’s quite bad. We have left the house but didn’t want to leave you sleeping if you hadn’t heard about it! I’ll send you the warning website. Cheers.”
Kings Park is two blocks away. I stumble out of the bedroom in my soft, slightly stained, button-down Eileen West nightgown leftover from my breastfeeding days, and find my husband in the kitchen. I show him the text. “I was wondering why there were so many helicopters flying around,” he says, sipping his coffee. “I guess we should wake the kids.” He seems nonchalant. I can’t decide how I feel about this.
The kids are sound asleep. The one on the top bunk is crammed against the railing due to the astonishing number of stuffed animals in her bed. “Girls,” I whisper. “You have to get up.” They don’t budge. “Girls,” I repeat loudly, “I need you to get up right now. We have to leave the house. There’s a fire.”
They sit up slowly. “I was in the middle of a dream,” one says. The other one rubs her eyes and asks, “Should we take Finn?”
I hadn’t considered the cat. I would have left the cat behind. I am a monster.
“Of course we’re taking Finn,” I say. “Get dressed.”
I return to my bedroom and shove our passports, two books and my laptop into a backpack. I pull on hiking shorts because they wash easily and this will be my only outfit for a long time. I snap on my fancy watch that I will pass on to one of my children someday, and slip on my wedding ring, which I haven’t worn recently due to Itchy Eczema Finger. I rub sunscreen on my face in case we need to sleep outside. Not in the park because that’s where the fire is, but possibly on the sidewalk outside of the shelter, in case it’s overcrowded or unsafe. By then, we will have made evacuation friends with whom we can play games and talk about the fire. I throw in a deck of cards, a notebook, and a few pens.
My husband enters the bedroom and announces, “I’m taking a quick shower.”
“Really?” I say.
“I’ll be fast,” he says.
Great. We are going to be living in a shelter and my husband will be freshly exfoliated and smell like lavender while the rest of us are dirty and clinging to the cat.
One daughter hands me her journal, a novel, and the stuffed animal she received for her first birthday. “Can you put these in your bag?”
The other daughter pulls on her gray sweatshirt that says “I’m So Freaking Cold,” and declares, “I don’t think I need anything.” She is smiling. She is often charmed by the possibility of disaster. (We started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer the other night. She asked if Buffy was going to die and I told her no, I’ve watched the whole series and she doesn’t die. “But, she could, right?” I sighed and said, “Fine, I guess she could.”)
We check the warning website and can’t figure out whether or not to leave. Wouldn’t a police officer have thumped on our door by now? Wouldn’t someone have a megaphone? The garbage truck just came by for goodness sake. The sky is bright blue.
I turn on the news. A national morning show is doing a segment called “Smashed Avo.” Apparently the price of avocadoes has skyrocketed. And now we have Bruno Mars winning a Grammy, and then a two-year old was found wandering his Sydney neighborhood alone. His babysitter had fallen asleep on the couch and the little boy put on his shoes and went for a walk. “He put his sneakers on!” I tell the girls. “How cute is that?”
“Aren’t we supposed to evacuate?” one of them asks.
My husband informs us the warning website has downgraded the fire. There is no threat to lives or homes. He is going to work. “You’re leaving us?” I say. He glances at the news. An interviewer is gushing over skateboarding sisters who hope to make the 2020 Olympics. “My kids are spewing that I’m meeting you both in the flesh.”
“You’re fine,” my husband says, kissing me, and leaves the house.
It is seven-thirty. Helicopters are still circling but we don’t need to go anywhere. I kick off my sneakers and think about all the things I would have forgotten to take with me. My mother’s diamonds, letters from my father, my mother-in-law’s photo album. I turn off the news and ask the girls if we should make waffles. My younger daughter, still wearing her sweatshirt, whips the cream while my older daughter sets the table and giggles. “From now on, we should call these Evacuation Waffles.”
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Evacuation Waffles
- 1 small container fresh whipping cream
- 2 cups frozen fruit (we used berries and mango)
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- 2 eggs, separated
- 1 ¾ cups milk
- 1 ¾ cups flour
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- ¼ cup vegetable oil
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- Whip fresh cream and set aside.
- Toss frozen fruit with a splash of water in a saucepan. Heat slowly until bubbly. Add a touch of cornstarch to thicken. Keep warm on stove.
- Beat egg yolks, stir in milk and oil. Add flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir just until large lumps disappear. Beat egg whites until stiff and gently fold into batter. Bake and serve with whipped cream and compote.