fire in the mato

Yesterday afternoon during Ju's nap I noticed a familiar smell wafting in the open windows.

This is how it starts: faint, almost indetectable. Is someone passing by with a cigarette? Lighting up a barbeque grill?

By the time Dan and E. arrived home at four, though, we had the windows closed and were hunkered down on the living room floor. The clouds of smoke obscured the bedroom window, and ashes were beginning to sift down through the edges of the skylight.

We quickly changed into our bathing suits, threw the boys into the car, and fled.

On the way down the driveway, we could see the flames lapping at the brush just outside the wall of the condominium, smoke rising into the sky.

We've experienced fires in the mato before, but never this close or widespread. They're usually the result of a cigarette tossed carelessly into the underbrush, or someone burning trash, and the spark spreading out of control.

Dete tells us there have been times when the fires have burned for weeks, all along the stretch of dunes and scrub just beyond the condominium.

(Here we are, refugees making our way along the coast.)

When we returned around six, the firefighters had come. But their firefighting abilities are hampered by the fact that there is no water source aside from what they bring on the truck. The fire appeared to have died down, but there were still flames lingering in a few palms.

And our house was still thick with smoke, so we brought the chicken and collards and baby food that Dete had prepared down to our friend Deena's house, and shared a very pleasant dinner with her and K. (She lives in the same condominium, but the winds had spared her the worst of the smoke).

By 7:30, the smoke had dissipated enough that we could make our way back home for bed. Ashes covered our front and back verandas, and dusted the upstairs hallway as well, and this morning we spied several wisps of smoke still snaking up behind the soccer field.

In other news, as I was throwing towels and diapers into a bag to make our getaway, Dan's cellphone rang.

It was a friend who works for the school, and who had been trying to help us with our phone plan. The company had been overcharging us for months, and in a last-ditch effort to get them to listen to him, our friend had threatened to change companies.

Well, the phone company took that as an excuse to cut our service. So now, after the three-month ordeal of actually getting a line, we are without telephone or Internet.

Under normal circumstances, either one of these two events in one afternoon would be enough to send me into paroxysms of anxiety and distress.

Now, I'm not saying I enjoyed being smoked out of our home, or having our phone and Internet cut off...but I did remain remarkably sanguine (if I do say so myself).

Why?

Well, our life has rather suddenly taken a different turn, which is giving me a new perspective on the whole thing.

Stay tuned, I'll be posting soon about what these changes are...