My family watched expectantly as I grabbed a gift bag and added it to the pile of wrapping paper covering my feet. I wore my family’s traditional birthday hat (a head-sized stuffed cake covered in fuzzy candles) and made a wish over my celebratory muffin, but I couldn’t focus on the party. My Oma’s eyes were glued to her phone, and my eyes were locked on her. A wildfire was near her house, smoke visible on the horizon, and all she could do was wait.
Feeling powerless, I continued with my birthday girl duties, DJing Taylor Swift and chatting through stories about senior year and college applications. Across the room, my Oma piped up. Her friend texted that the fire had crossed the river and was getting closer. In the heat of the Texas summer, the ground was dry, severe water restrictions were already in place and springs were drying up. With the weather forecast showing wind picking up for the night, we knew the fire was a real threat.
From posts on Twitter, I learned that the “Oak Grove” fire was spreading and 0% contained. Air tankers were flying back and forth from a few towns over. Some families had been asked to evacuate. But according to fire trackers, we were still a safe distance away.
My grandparents decided they were comfortable moving to the next phase of the party, a dinner reservation at the fancy Italian restaurant at a hill country winery half an hour away. I changed into a blue sundress and my beloved floral cowgirl boots and applied red lipstick. But when I looked in the mirror, it all felt wrong. How could I celebrate when a wildfire was barreling toward my grandparents’ house? My dad left with my other grandparents, who came from out of town for my birthday, and the rest of us followed.
As soon as my mom and I hit the main road, we could see large plumes of smoke coming off a hill a few miles away. I held my breath as we drove through clouds of smoke, eyes searching for hints of orange on the gray horizon. Cautiously, we followed our route straight past the fire, weaving through a growing swarm of volunteer police cars. We pulled over to let emergency vehicles pass, watching as they turned into the neighborhood just over the hill from my grandparents’ house.
I wasted no time calling my grandparents, feeling more uneasy by the second. With the fire only growing, they decided to head home and prepare “go bags.” Turning the car around, my mom and I left no room for argument: Oma and Opa needed to evacuate, and we were going to help. Picking up the phone from the parking lot of the restaurant, my dad announced that black ashes were falling from the sky. At our cue, he canceled the reservation and took my brother back to Austin. My other grandparents went home.
My stomach was full of butterflies as we flew down country roads, seeing and hearing planes flying low overhead. We pulled into Oma and Opa’s driveway at the top of a big hill, where the smoke plume was visible from their front porch. My grandparents had never evacuated from a wildfire before, but they had made a list of essential items during a threat a few years prior.
Opa began sorting important legal and financial documents. Oma sent me to work collecting every photograph from around the house while she and my mom filtered through art and cards from grandkids. I couldn’t stop my tears as we filled a box with family memories, from the barely legible watermelon-basil recipe I wrote in elementary school to the stuffed bunny I cuddled with every time I stayed over as a kid. Standing inside the house that my grandparents built, surrounded by relics of our family’s history, I processed the fact that we couldn’t protect everything. With little time to evacuate and limited space in our cars, we made split-second decisions on whether or not items were worth saving. My grandpa’s boots. My grandma’s jewelry box. The rifles that had been passed down for generations. Photos of my great-great-grandparents. The “I love MacJ” sticker resting on my grandma’s mirror. The bunny statues scattered around the house. The grandparent book.
From work files to formal wear, my grandparents had no trouble leaving things behind. My grandpa said he knew, after 70 years of life, that very few items actually mattered. He could replace the sofas and the suits and the silverware, but he couldn’t replace his loved ones and the memories they shared. The whole house could burn down, but with his family by his side, it would be OK. When we were confident that we had collected the essential items, walls bare except for the shadow of photos that hung there for years, we locked the door and found shelter at a house down the road.
After unloading the boxes, we ordered a pizza, not exactly the luxurious Italian birthday dinner we had all expected. We spent the night tracking the fire from the living room and comforting each other. It wasn’t until we sat down to eat that my grandparents discovered that in the whirlwind of collecting family photos and fragments of my childhood, they had left some money behind.
By 11 p.m. the fire was partially contained, and my grandparents had somewhere safe to sleep. My mom and I said our goodbyes, and my grandparents engulfed me in a big hug. As they wished me a happy birthday once more, all I could do was laugh. It seemed impossible that the day that began with Starbucks and shopping had ended with wildfires and watery eyes.
The wildfire was fully contained a couple days later, and it never reached my grandparents. I was sad that my birthday had quite literally gone up in flames, but more than anything I was relieved that my loved ones were OK. My Opa was right: From a fancy dinner to the items unprotected in their house, no item held a birthday candle to the family I celebrated with.
