“We didn’t take out the Trash” Facebook Post January 13, 2025

Thank you to everyone for your outpouring of love and concern. Gary and I are truly grateful, more than we could ever put into words. We are back in Virginia now. Still watching the news and the winds in LA. The police have blocked off our street so Jacob can’t get to the house. The human mind is funny. I worry about the house being destroyed in the same breath that I worry that we evacuated so quickly that I didn’t wash the dishes and Gary didn’t take out the trash. How is that possible? One part of my brain says, “Oy, we could lose the house.” And the other part of my brain says, “Oy, the trash must smell and the dishes, and the beds aren’t made…”. I think in trauma we focus on what we can control rather than the magnitude of what we can’t. So I sit here looking out my window in McLean, Virginia at the snow. My iPad says it is 28 degrees. My heart is in Encino, but I took the trauma of evacuation and seeing the fires from Ventura Blvd with me. It is hard to talk about it. The bellman at the airport hotel told me that God would watch over me. I believe that. I always have. And the rabbi and faithful Jew prays that God watches over all the people who have nowhere to escape to, who left with the clothes on their backs. Our grandkids are still out of school and so many kids don’t have schools to go to. I suppose when the magnitude of an event is overwhelming, one focuses on the little things… we didn’t take out the trash.