Where There's Smoke

When I wake up at dawn the sun is red. The skies are filled with white and gray, almost like the fog we normally see here in Northern California in the summertime. Maybe there is a little fog out there, but when I step out to pick up the papers from the sidewalk, I smell it. You can't smell fog. But the smoke that has drifted over the city, over the entire state for the past five days is evident the minute I take a breath.

The first day it made me nostalgic. The morning air smelled like a beach bonfire, a campfire on its way out, even the embers of a fire crackling in the fireplace. But the novelty wore off quickly as the radio and television news reporters listed all the wildfires burning in different parts of the state, many only partially contained, with new fires starting every day. When the reporters talked about unhealthy air and particulates that can lodge deep within your lungs. We've got draught conditions already this summer, and even though it's only June, the woods and the valleys and the mountains are parched and crispy, ready to go at a hint of heat lightening; humidity hardly exists.

"Smell the smoke?" I ask my sleepy teenagers already set to their new, no-school schedule as they wander toward breakfast. "See the haze," I say as I pour the orange juice. "It's not fog, it's smoke from all the fires burning!" They don't answer, they aren't listening. They aren't old enough yet to feel the guilt I feel about having inflicted so much trash, so much rubbish on the earth. Climate change and global warming, these are things they've learned about in school, and so they dutifully recycle their water bottles and compost their food scraps. But they don't take ownership of the scary, dirty place the world's become. And why should they? For all intents and purposes we're raising our kids right so they will take responsibility for their own garbage, so they will grow up to be ecologically responsible adults.

Each day when another red sun greets me, and the smokey haze obliterates the sunshine, I wonder though. I hope it's not too late.

Graduation Blues

Today my 15-year-old son graduated from middle school. Actually in the parlance of private, Catholic schools, he graduated from elementary school because he started there in kindergarten nine years ago and just finished up 8th grade. In August, he will start high school.

Right now, at almost 8:00 p.m., I am supposed to be at a graduation party. But I have pleaded exhaustion and a stomach ache, both true, but usually not enough to keep me down. But here I am at the computer keeping company with one of my two cats, and I am still working to process what has happened.

I have a son who's in high school. I have a son who stares me down, who fights with me over personal hygiene, over personal space, who tells me how to drive my car ("Mom, go!" when I dally at a changing light). I have a son who isn't even coming home after the party but spending the night at a friend's, then flying down to Santa Monica with three other friends and a dad, to spend a wild weekend seeing the sights at Venice beach. This boy of mine who's just barely 15. Who, the other night had to show me the three long and curly hairs he's grown under his arms as if to prove to me that he is really growing up. As if I didn't know.

I didn't cry at the graduation ceremony. I was ready to, when I thought Matt would win a prize. I thought he would win for best writer, for he is a marvel, or for sportsmanship as he is an awesome athlete. But he didn't win anything. He simply marched across the stage when his name was called, his face burnt and sunburned from the school's field day--a full day of sports at a local soccer field--when he forgot or just resisted putting on the sunscreen I had begged him to before he left. He kept his head down in the light of his father's and grandparents' digital cameras glinting, hiding a smile as he shook hands with the headmaster with whom he'd never seen exactly eye to eye.

I didn't even cry at the obligatory Mass the school held last week where they showed a video of the boys (it's an all-boys Catholic school) from way back in kindergarten where they were still wearing short pants and knee socks to the hulking adolescents that they are today, complete with nostalgic music. No, tears were far from my mind. All I have been thinking for the last two weeks is: I remember 15. I remember the equal parts desire, love, anger, hatred, joy, fear, and triumph I felt every day for a million reasons and how confusing it all was. I remember wanting to be in love, wanting to be the best; I remember thinking that no one had ever or would ever understand me because I was so freaking different from everyone else in the entire world. And here alone, I want to say to Matt, hey, bud, I understand. And it just keeps getting more confusing every day. But never ever forget that even when I'm screaming my head off over a towel on the floor or a lost retainer, I love you so much my heart will burst.

Congratulations, graduate!