A candle's light grows by lighting another

Continuing my series about the recent wildfires that turned our sky red. I noticed in my past posts a lot of people think this is caused by stupid gender reveal parties. Gender reveal caused 1 fire, but the other 650 fires were caused by an unprecedented dry thunderstorm.

I’ve lived in CA for over 20 years and I’ve never seen thunderstorms in August during drought season. Unlike other parts of the world, the normal climate in CA doesn’t get storms until winter. This storm is the remains of Tropical Storm Fausto which caused over 11,000 lightning strikes resulting in over 2 million acres burned, turning our sky red like the apocalypse.  

This is what climate change looks like. Not some stupid gender reveal caused by the mistakes of a few, but the collective consequences of us all failing to protect the only home we have. The least we can do is accept reality instead of living in denial. No matter how bad it is now, it will get even worse if we continue to do nothing. 

Yesterday I answered the phone at work and when I said my name the woman on the other line got so excited and said “Madeline?? You’re exactly who I wanted to talk to! This is Marie Brandon, you helped me about a month ago. How late are you working today?” It was her!! And about an hour later she and her husband showed up, and she was carrying a huge stack of old knitting patterns for me, and her husband brought in a few boxes full of yarn. They couldn’t stay long but I was so touched that she remembered me, and I struggled to not just flat out start crying when she handed me the patterns. When I looked through them later I realized it was her entire personal collection from over the years, including all her personal notes and drawings and even some photographs of her finished pieces. No one in my family knits, and to have someone pass on their legacy to me like that was incredibly moving.

But here’s the thing

I forgot to account for the fact that my mom is a huge nature nerd

So I came home from school this afternoon to my mom with a list of different trees and bird names that she thinks I should name myself

Here are some highlights:

Devil’s walking stick

Titmouse

Cardinal (I’m not apposed to this one)

Jay

Peregrine

Pawpaw

Pileated woodpecker

Birch

Maple

Cypress (legit considering this one)

Dogwood

She legitimately thinks these are good names and she also came to the realization that a) she should’ve given all her kids gender-neutral names. She wishes she’d given in to her inner hippie and named us things like blue, moon, river, ocean, and sky.

and B) she wants to now give all of her kids tree/bird nicknames. She followed my sister around for an hour asking if she wanted to be named oak or spruce.