Our Imperfect Human Selves: The Burn Scar Part 5

Ariel makes the trip out to see the new construction of her family home. But it’s nothing like the one that burned down in the Marshall Fire. Her feeling of solastalgia is long gone.

Five days short of the one year anniversary of the fire, my family opens Christmas presents in my parent’s mountain house.  It’s my girls and husband, my parents, Katie and her partner Becca. I had transported a very special gift for everyone. 

“How mysterious,” Becca says. 

Mom opens the present I’ve given her. “Wow, it looks like photo albums. These are all old photos!  So somehow these survived!” They’re photos I took with me when I left home.  

“Yeah, because I’m a hoarder of things,” I say.

“You had them?” Mom asks.

“Yay, that’s awesome. Thank you!” she says.

“Some of these I don’t even recognise where we are,” Mom says. 

“I’ve been toting them around the country with me for decades. You can see Katie and Kevin.” 

“Katie and Kevin. Look how little they are!” Mom says, laughing.

“I should make a copy of that for Amy,” I say. “That’s one of the best ones, I think, of Andrew. That’s when we were at the sand dunes.”

“Yeah, he looks so happy,” Mom says. 

“This is, I think, Andrew,” I say, turning over the pages of the album.

“Yeah, I think you’re right.” 

“That must have been just like minutes after he was born.” 

“Probably was.”

When I first looked at them after the fire, it was hard to imagine not having these. When there’s no record to remind you of a memory you had, it kinda dissolves.

“There’s grandma and grandpa, Mom. Here’s one with Grandma and Grandpa in it and you. You got three generations.”

“Is this our house?” Katie asks.

“That is our house, yeah,” I say.

“That’s where the piano used to be?”

“Yeah.”

You start to forget the details.

“Oh, those are wonderful,” Mom says again. “I’m so glad that you have these!”

“I know, when that happened I was like, man, it is a good thing that I am a hoarder and uber sentimental,” I say.

“A lot of these I don’t remember,” she tells me.

“Oh my god!  This is my best friend Kevin Austin!” Katie says.

“Super cute!” Becca says.

“We’re both gay now,” Katie says and they both laugh.

You forget how safe you felt, blind to the possibility of disaster. Today, even while being transported back in time, we’re all aware of the looming threat of living here. Most of all Mom, which I know when she gives little warnings…

“They might burn down again. Don’t leave the photos here,” she says. “This house could burn too.” 

Mountain homes are in even greater danger than homes on the Front Range. Since the Marshall Fire, what to do with this house has become a more pressing issue. As Dad continues to decline, they haven’t been able to spend time up here without help. And there has been so much financial paperwork for Mom she’s barely had time to think about this house, let alone live in it. 

“One of the things is thinking maybe we should sell this house and just live in Louisville,” Mom tells me. “But it's so nice to be up here.”

“Well, there is this carbon footprint you leave every time you go back and forth between the mountains and Louisville,” I say.

“There is, you're right. I do think about that. That's why I want to get an electric car.” 

The mountain house has served as a great family gathering place. Even before the Marshall Fire, we were spending Christmases up here. So the thought of not having this place to gather is painful for all of us. But if we really want to be responsible for our actions against climate change we shouldn’t even have a second home. Mom is conflicted because in other parts of her life she’s doing whatever she can to stay green, and, had it not been for Dad’s constant medical needs, she would have lived up here after the fire.

“The other thing is, I think, ‘well, one of these days, what if Louisville is like an average temperature of 80 year round instead of 60? This will be a nice place to retreat to.’ Having two big houses like this is probably indulgent, and I haven't really come to terms yet what to do about that. I think that’s something I want to talk with the whole family about,” Mom says. 

Perhaps Mom’s inner conflict represents some generational privilege that she’s just starting to see. She does want what’s best for the planet, but it’s hard if that means giving up the comforts she’s worked for her whole life. She wants to keep providing something for her kids, but what if that something is coming at a greater financial and environmental cost? I’ve had these thoughts on my mind since our conversation about creating a multi-generational home. If I do move my family back home, I’ll be face-to-face with the conflict between what we all say we want for the planet, and how we’re really living. Because, as I’ve come to find out, Louisville is not doing everything it can to foster a green community. 

Gung Ho!

My sister Katie and I have a lot of heart-to-hearts over this holiday, the one year anniversary. She likes the idea of my family moving into the new house with Mom. She recognizes that Mom will probably need the help. She’s also felt the disconnect between what people in Louisville say they want and how they live. 

“I think parts of me reject it now,” she says. “Like, I don’t seek out suburbia for my future, which the entirety of Louisville is one big suburb I would say.” 

I ask her what she thinks about Mom’s decision to rebuild a big expensive house on a fire prone lot.

“I think it's still a good idea, especially since they're considering fire prevention in this new build. Also, I think Mom is… I just think a project is good for her.”

A project is a requirement for Mom.  She has told me time and again that having the new house to look forward to keeps her optimistic amidst the daily tasks of caretaking and managing the financial situation, all while living in a one-bedroom apartment. And she hasn’t just decided to rebuild. She has decided to try to eliminate everything in her life that relies on fossil fuels. She’s building to the net zero 2021 codes. The house will be getting solar panels installed on the roof. She’s doing all this despite the fact that the insurance payout doesn’t cover all these costs. I think she sees this rebuild as her opportunity to contribute to the fight against climate change. So it’s been a juggling act of moving money around and liquidating some accounts, applying for grants, and borrowing against the mountain house. But she’s really committed to doing this, and, in typical Mom fashion, she really likes nerding out on this new life project. 

After Christmas, my mom organizes a tour for us with someone who is a force in the green living movement, Stuart Cummings.  He helped found Go Electric Colorado, a consulting organization for homeowners wanting to transition to fully electric homes. He loves giving people tours of his little retrofitted Boulder house.

“How windy does it get here?” I ask Stu.

“Well, the Marshall Fire, they clocked at a 116 at NCAR. We had like about 105, 110 right here.”

Stu’s also pretty knowledgeable about fire protection. “Have you just been doing all that research yourself?” I ask.

“Yeah, there's a huge body of research. If you look at all the California fires, there's volumes and then the Marshall Fire’s a trove,” he says. 

He’s been slowly transitioning his 1960s Boulder home, for years, from an inefficient gas heated, drafty house, to a fully insulated and enclosed home envelope, a technical term that means the house doesn’t let any air in or out through windows or walls.

“On average we’re using about 27%, maximally 33%, of the energy we used to use,” he says.  

This tour gets very technical, as he brings us first into the garage, where he shows us duct work that leads from the outside wall into the interior of the house. He explains that this airtight home relies on a controlled system of air intake, through this ductwork, because the home doesn’t get outside air leaking in anywhere else. The air that does come in gets filtered. 

“So this MERV 13 is a standard high filtration that takes all the smoke out,” he says. “If we go to MERV 15 It takes everything outside. It's basically a hospital. So this is a really neat unit, it’s US made. It's just a simple piece of sheet metal.” 

The rest of the house is heated and cooled by mini splits, which are wall or ceiling mounted units that don’t use any ductwork, but rather an outside compressor, in order to heat and cool. 

“So here's one of the mini split heads,” he says. “This is what they look like.” 

Doing this tour gets me pumped up about the possibilities of electric homes in our future. Things are getting cheaper as more people build and install electric heating and cooling systems. And you can do it yourself! What if we could retrofit our old Kentucky home this way. Maybe we could achieve our own electric home without moving into Mom’s.  Then Stu starts to get a little philosophical.

“That’s the thing too. Fossil fuel, whether it be cars or home heating, it’s really impoverishing. The whole energy system we have in the United States is impoverishing.” 

He starts talking about how fossil fuels help keep poor people poor. Monthly heating costs are so high in some areas that people have no way to save and invest in something better. So just because this technology is available doesn’t mean it’s accessible since people are struggling just to pay for the energy costs they have. 

“A huge challenge with weatherizing is a lot of rural poverty, a lot of poorly built homes,” Stu says. “There’s a lot of housing stock that you’re better off tearing it down.  The good news is they’re coming a long way with manufactured homes, and 3D printed homes are the latest and greatest things. If our country just put a little bit of money into that we could house everybody in really high quality. We’re gonna have to build new housing, a lot of it, just to house the homeless.” 

Then it’s almost like he reads my mind.

“Then there’s just so much waste in the United States. In the United States, we just have countless second homes. We have unoccupied homes. Unoccupied properties.” Unoccupied homes like the one we just left. I study Mom’s face when Stu starts saying this, looking for some recognition, but I don’t think she can give that in this moment. I don’t say anything either. But I remember her defending her decision to rebuild when we talked earlier. 

“Everybody is pretty much gung ho,” Mom had said then. “They're all saying, ‘yeah, this is the right thing to do,’ and I believe it too.”

Louisville really does need people to rebuild to keep the local economy growing, and these updated homes will be providing more carbon free housing stock. But there is still the fire factor that’s really on my mind. Even on this tour, I’m getting a clearer picture of what living in a fire prone environment means.

Credit: Ariel Lavery

“Do you ever just, like, open the window instead?” I ask Stu.

“My wife criticizes me,” he says with a laugh. “It’s just such geeky stuff. In the passive house world you never open a window because you’re violating the air envelope.”

I’m realizing  we’ll never live in a house like the one I grew up in. I’ll never be that blissfully ignorant again.

“I got a rolling shutter on that window. It’s down almost all winter. And even the big one in the back is a hand crank, and that only goes down for high winds or fire,” Stu says.

What Does the Community Really Support?

I have honestly really enjoyed learning alongside Mom all about how to electrify one’s life, prepare for a carbon-free future. But sometimes all these geeky new tech solutions to our climate problems seem like we might be jumping the gun on some simpler solutions. Something I’ve become more aware of since the fire is the climate impact of affluence. In 2022, a research project at UC Berkeley maps out the entire country’s carbon footprint, neighborhood by neighborhood. And guess what, Louisville is not in the blue! Not even close! In fact, my poorer Kentucky neighborhood is much greener, probably because people can’t afford to fly around the world and buy lots of stuff all the time. People who live in Murray mostly work in Murray. So even though my Kentucky community is much more conservative, it’s contributing less carbon to the atmosphere than Louisville. When Katie and I talk about this stuff we almost always agree on the kind of communities we want to live in.

“Locally sustainable communities. It's not just heat pumps and minis splits and whole house fans, but it's kind of a little more. It's socioeconomically sustainable as well as biophysically sustainable,” Katie says.

When we think about what Louisville is, it’s not really lining up yet. Before the fire, Louisville was trying to be proactive against climate change by requiring new buildings to go net zero. And as we all learned, that can be extremely expensive.  So Louisville effectively priced out any middle and low income earners. But there could be other ways Louisville could welcome people: for one thing, they could encourage more multigenerational living like what Mom and I are thinking about doing. When we first started talking about moving in together, I asked her if she’d seen any house plans that have something like a mother-in-law apartment. But she tells me that she has learned they aren’t allowed by city codes. I can’t wrap my head around this! But maybe Lisa Ritchie knows more about where this came from. Lisa, you’ll remember, was the Interim Director of Planning and Safety when the Marshall Fire hit.

“I personally am very supportive of these alternative housing types,” Lisa says. “This one-size-fits-all, a single family home for every family, it's expensive, it's not needed. Louisville is actually one of the few communities at least in Boulder County that doesn't allow what we call accessory dwelling units.” Or ADUs for short.


“I probably get a call or two a month from a family inquiring if this is allowed,” Lisa says. “So I definitely think that there's a lot of folks thinking about how this could be beneficial. After the Marshal Fire, now that we've kind of gotten our feet under us, city council has asked us to have a discussion on ADUs.” 

“It's part of our work plan for 2023 is to discuss the whole ADUs and affordable housing and all that,” says Deb Fahey, our neighbor and city council member, who is also in favor of allowing ADUs in Louisville. She’s seen it help young people in neighboring communities.

“This young couple, they don't have any kids yet, and and they're living in the ADU and renting out the house, and because of that, the rent is paying their mortgage.” 

Allowing ADUs wouldn't just allow for more young people to come in.

“When you’re older there comes a time when you might need a little assistance in your day-to-day life with the cooking or the shopping or driving transportation, whatever it is. It would be really nice to just have a caregiver living in an ADU or have one of your kids move home and take care of you just in that little way that you need it because hiring in home care is very expensive.” 

Mom wants to build an ADA compliant home where she can age in place. Lots of people who are rebuilding are doing this. Having an extra apartment in the house would make it possible for Mom to hire some live-in help if she needs it, or it could just make it easier for a multi-generational home to function. Because, let’s be honest, moving your husband and kids into your parent’s house comes with some… difficulties. 

“So out of curiosity, have you had conversations with any of your kids about potentially coming back?” I ask Deb. She laughs skeptically.

“I don't know.”

“That’s a long shot, huh?”

Everyone I talk with about the ADU restriction seems in favor of allowing them.  Our neighbor Amy Austin is also thinking about aging in place, and she really wants her kids to be able to come back to the Front Range for good.

“We call them special renters,” Amy says. “They don't like to be pressured, but I was like, ‘Oh, look at what's available to special renters. Also the hot tub in the backyard.’” 

But there’s concern among some Louisvillians that allowing extra separate living spaces would change the character of Louisville. It could start to look more like Lafayette, the less affluent city to the east. Some people worry that ugly shacks would pop up in people’s backyards, off-street parking would become congested, or “strange” people would move into their neighborhoods.

“As far as a perfect stranger moving in I’m like, ‘well, you’re children are perfect strangers to me.  You’re a perfect stranger to me.’ I did some research on this, through AARP, who is really big on this being something that's very good for seniors, very good for communities,very good for the environment. Some of the things that they pointed out is the average size of a home has almost tripled since the 50s. So the average home was like 900 square feet; now it's 2,300 square feet. But the average number of people living in the house has actually gone down.”

Amy has been actively advocating for allowances to extra living spaces. She’s spoken at city council about it. They have been getting feedback, since the Marshall Fire, from the public on the issue but haven’t yet made a decision one way or another. Amy spoke in August of 2022 during a public comment period:

“As you know, approximately 92% of the Marshall Fire victims are underinsured,” Amy told the council. “Allowing ADUs could give these families a source of revenue to help overcome the financial difficulties that are caused by the fire and the lack of funding by insurance companies and the government. Louisville also has very little affordable housing. ADUs often provide housing at a lower cost than apartments, especially apartments that are owned by large investors. ADUs keep the investment in our community. The young people in our community cannot afford to buy housing anywhere on the Front Range and, due to high rent, cannot save enough, even for a down payment. Family ADUs offer an opportunity for reduced rent so that this generation can make progress toward homeownership.” 

If I know Mom, when she moves into this new house, she’s never going to want to go back to a senior living facility. Having an extra living space would help her stay, and would help house more people in less space. If the ADU restriction all comes down to the character of the community, maybe Loisvillians should look at what’s already happening.  Because this fire is already changing the types of homes that are here. Homes are being rebuilt to accommodate for an older and more wealthy population. In fact, most of the homes that are being rebuilt are larger than the homes that burned! The house that Mom is looking to rebuild is 800 square feet larger than the one I grew up in. So my biggest question is, in a world where more people are being displaced and the cost of living is going up, how can Louisville make it easier for people to live here? Investing in better technology and bigger houses doesn’t solve this dilemma. 

My cynicism makes moving back feel like a bad choice. Would I be able to move past all this judgment if I move back home? Then I have a conversation that makes me take a deep breath. 

Living with Fear

Us Marshall Fire victims will probably never be able to return to our blissful ignorance about wildfire. Every time I pass a cluttered Front Range neighborhood, I can’t help but picture how the fire will spread, devouring house after house. Even in Kentucky, whenever I make a fire in our outdoor fire pit, I have a twinge of anxiety and water down the yard around the pit. I’ve wondered how Louisville will be able to adapt to the new knowledge that this landscape burns. In a historical fire map of Colorado, I see that a lot of the Front Range is in the red, meaning, historically, fires have been a normal part of this landscape. Many communities in the west have taken on new preventative measures to protect themselves against wildfire. Controlled burns are one solution more communities are exploring. But I’m not sure anyone here would be okay with that. People in Louisville are still traumatized. In March of 2022, three months after the Marshall Fire, another human-caused fire broke out in the foothills of Boulder, near NCAR, due east of where the Marshall Fire started. Our neighbor Deb told of a moment of PTSD. 

“I was sitting in the living room looking out the window of the condo and could see the smoke from the fire by NCAR,” she says. “That was my first thing was, ‘I can't do this again.’” 

“The image of that white plume of smoke above Davidson Mesa, when I couldn't see what was going on down below. And the first image I had in my mind was, ‘Oh, my God, it's happening again.’”  You remember Larry Boven? The retired volunteer firefighter who joined us on our forensic tour of the Enclave? Since the Marshall Fire, he’s been reelected as treasurer to Louisville’s Fire Protection District, and become even more involved in creating a firewise Louisville. He is also in his 70s, so the decision to rebuild his home in the Hillside neighborhood wasn’t easy.

“I'm feeling a lot more hopeful now,” Larry says. “Just because we broke ground several months ago.”

“Are you guys building an ADA compliant home for your wife?” I ask Larry.

“Yes, pretty much so. I think a lot of people are thinking of aging in place,” he says. “I wanted it to be for Mary so that she would feel comfortable. I know I had a lot of trepidation about the whole fact that this was going to be a very expensive proposition for us, at this juncture in our life.”

Today, many of our neighbors’ rebuilds are well underway. 129 families have moved back into new homes and another 277 are on their way. Some of them are rebuilding with flammable materials and less than ideal architectural plans for fire mitigation. Some are even surrounding their lots with wood fences, one of the major culprits of the Marshall Fire’s spread. But when I ask Larry if he’s frustrated with this, if he thinks home fire mitigation should be mandated, he surprises me. 

“I'm of two minds about that. You've got to give people a carrot. Individual freedom versus social responsibility.”

I’m still feeling a bit cynical about the area becoming more expensive with larger designer homes and the city’s lack of building mandates for fire protection.  But Larry helps reframe things for me.

“It’s so easy to get into a depression over what’s been happening,” says Larry. “People don’t want to be under this dark cloud. I look at some of the homes that were cited: the 100 feet perimeters, the thickness of the walls, and the inset windows. I don’t want to live in a stockade, and that’s really what you’re talking about at that point. How do we come together on that and create a culture of fire awareness in our community? Do we do that by mandate? Or do we do that more by education? I would prefer to do it based on education.” 

Larry starts to tell me a different approach to fire protection for our neighborhood.  He tells me that Louisville might be able to manage themselves out of danger by simply paying attention to its open spaces.

“Louisville, they have a love of their open space. We were so enamored with the idea of having open space that we didn’t really look at the open space as what going to make that open space more resilient, more native? So that it really can handle fire in the future?”

Louisville has started taking preventative measures to cut back the grasses.

“They have been doing more mowing around the trail systems,” he says. Which doesn’t seem like a very green solution. But they have been experimenting with some other really creative strategies like livestock grazing.

“We had those cows, we had those goats up on Davison Mesa for a while and they're moving them around to other areas.” 

They’ve also cleaned out the elaborate ditch system that, before the fire, was full of debris contributing to the propagation of the fire.  Now Larry thinks those ditches have the potential to act as fire breaks.

“A fire break, like up on Davidson Mesa, might have been a real plus,” says Larry. “Because it would have given more time for fire trucks, fire equipment to get staged and ready.” 

The city is trying to educate people too. Organizations have been invited to give presentations on fire prevention, and Larry himself is part of a group that has been passing out educational pamphlets that give advice on how to do simple things to mitigate one’s house. 

“How do we come together and create a culture of fire awareness? The idea of talking to your neighbor.” 

“Yeah, creating that community,” I add.

Credit: Ariel Lavery

“Yeah, you tell them, ‘okay, why don’t you two work it out and instead of having a wood fence between your two houses you just put up some sort of vinyl or wire fence or something.’ We also need to create a culture of volunteerism and do that in a way that really encourages them, gets them out. And have them feel like, ‘hey, guess what I did today!  I cleaned up this part of the Good View Ditch. Or I cleaned up this part of the Davidson Ditch.’”

I have to stop here and say that when Larry mentions this idea of the community coming together and investing in themselves, volunteering time to fix their own problem, my cynicism melts away.  Here’s a man who is part of Mom’s generation, and one of Mom’s neighbors to boot, who wants the same thing I do from my community: togetherness and resilience. I haven’t been sure their generation is up to the task of making these kinds of social transitions for a green future. But I feel so inspired by his vision that it helps me imagine neighbors coming together to address the issues I’ve brought up. Honestly, knowing that he will be living just over the hill makes me feel like, ‘yes, moving back into The Enclave will be good for my girls and my family. People in this community do have an appetite for coming together to solve things.’  Yet, my inner cynic comes sneaking back. I start thinking about what hasn’t yet happened to protect future residents.

“But a lot of those houses are being built larger than the original ones closer together,” I point out. “A lot of these houses are like 14 feet apart. Do you see that as a problem?”

“I would be remiss if I didn't say, yeah, that's a problem. As much as I want to believe this is never going to happen again. I feel strongly and still do that it's not if but when.”

Communing

My generation is exposed to a lot of doom these days. Katie and I parse out a lot of that in our conversations. 

“I was just contemplating my mortality constantly last year,” my sister tells me. “So I think a lot of where I'm at right now definitely came from watching a lot of this stuff go down and these declines and Dad.” 

“Well, and, I mean, in some way we've all experienced a little death with the house,” I say.

“Yes, yes. Yeah.” 

“It's  sort of, like, you close the book. We're never gonna go back there.”

“Mmhmm,” she says. “I will say we have a really long way to go.  It can get a lot worse in Colorado. I say that coming from California. I mean, I've been doing ag research in a desert for two and a half years. The drought is just brutal.”

Katie received her Masters of Science in soils and biochemistry from UC Davis, and when she talks sustainable living models, I listen. 

“Unfortunately, the legislation and the commodity boards and all the industry out there are gonna keep things business as usual for as long as they can,” she says. “The lack of green communities requires the need for these fire safe communities.” 

Katie is just as much of a cynic as me, but she has education about alternative models of sustainable communities that are really appealing… and possible.

“So my view of the way that human civilization is going, though, I base a lot of my views around agriculture,” she says. “I think one way or another, we are going towards smaller farm futures, and more locally sustainable communities. But it's, how are we going to get there? Are we going to legislate ourselves there? Or is there going to be a lot of climate change disaster and a lot of tragedy that's gonna get us there. There are a lot of innovative solutions out there. There are a lot of creative solutions that we have that a lot of communities aren’t going to explore for one reason or another.”

“Because of just, like, zoning,” I add. 

“Sure but that’s… zoning’s bullshit. That’s something we decide! We're in a situation that we have to manage ourselves out of. We’re at the table eating – we can't just put our forks and knives down and stop. It's a runaway train.”

This is pretty much exactly where I’ve landed today. I would love to believe that if we let people make their own informed decisions, like Larry would prefer, we’ll somehow come out of this climate crisis safe on the other side. Perhaps a little more burned, a little more exhausted, but safe. When I consider Mom’s situation, I have to consider all the forces at work in her life. Everything after the fire pushed toward rebuilding in the same place, the same single family home model. And, though she is more motivated than ever to eliminate her carbon footprint, she still has a lifetime of investments guiding her decisions. The climate implications of having two homes became glaringly clear after the fire. The decisions we make are becoming ever more burdensome. But this is our starting point.

My mom tells me, “I think this sort of gives you the realization that as a species we’ve really removed ourselves way too much from everything, the world we live in. We've insulated ourselves, and we think we’re impermeable. Our defenses are great, we have our houses, our cities, or towns, and I think we've really lost touch with a lot of stuff around us.” 

It’s going to be hard for Mom to envision a totally different way of living, a way that relies more on neighbors, more on community support, more on reinventing our lives. She’s been comfortable in her life for a long time. But dandelions are always having to adapt to survive.  The tragedy of the Marshall Fire is changing how Mom sees her generation’s role in the climate crises. She’s learning to be less comfortable. 

“I know that you fancy yourself a dandelion,” I tell her, which makes her chuckle. “And you are, but I’ve also been really impressed with your flexibility through all of this. Because I know that you had a lot of comforts. Not just creature comforts, but just your things that you really needed, like your bicycles and your this and your that. I think all the kids recognize that it’s very difficult for you living in the apartment. And it’s a totally different lifestyle. You never imagined yourself living this way when you were 72.”

“Yeah, not really,” she says.

“But I’ve been really impressed with your flexibility to kind of understand and acquire this new way of living. And I just wonder if that’s extending into thinking about other ways of living, you know, beyond building a green home and stuff but ways of living greener?” 

“Yeah, I think it has, somewhat,” she says. “I think more than ever it’s a good idea to eat simply. Eat whole foods, grains, beans, greens. The more you can grow the better off you are, and eat your own stuff. I’m not that interested in going out to fancy restaurants. Trying to build green and just live simply and not jetting off to the Canary Islands for a vacation so you can tell all your friends and post it all over Facebook. It’s a painful process, but I think it's been very transformative, and it's kind of changed my outlook. What I think about now is we've got to make things better for our grandkids for Lumi and Calliope and Elle, we've got to really ensure that they have a decent place to live. Because, otherwise, it might be even more horrifying for them.”

Since I’ve had children, I’ve had more and more anxiety about the planet we could be leaving them. There’s a quote in one of my favorite podcasts, Threshold, hosted by Amy Martin, that describes the position my mom and I find ourselves in especially well. 

“Our biggest barriers and our most promising tools are our imperfect human selves.” 

This quote tells me that as long as climate action is human led, it will not be perfect. If we move my family back to The Enclave, things will not feel perfect. I will still have unease about being complicit living in a big house, in an upper class neighborhood, that could burn down again. But our family’s carbon footprint will overlap with Mom’s, and we’ll certainly cut down on emissions without traveling to and from Kentucky. My girls will get to know their grandmother as a mentor and caretaker rather than a Christmastime family member.  And I’ll be able to help Mom stay in her house. So maybe this is step one toward our sustainable future, and one step toward making this home again.

Home

“Hi!”

“Hi!”

I get to visit the house under construction with my family and kids in the summer of 2023. My sister Katie is in town again with her partner Becca, which makes the first tour of this place really special.  

“We’re going next week because he did say the electrical are starting,” Mom is telling us.

“Electrical? That’s good. Because they do plumbing before electrical,” I say. 

“Yeah, all the plumbing looks like it’s in,” Katie says.

“And once the electrical gets done everything else is gonna go fast,” I say.

“As long as no supply chain issues pop up,” says Katie. “I think that’s what slowed down the Austin’s a lot.”

We’ve talked a bit about where everyone would sleep. Dad’s decline has made it less likely that he’ll ever be able to move in without full time nursing care. So maybe my husband and I would be sleeping in the master bedroom, if Mom could give that up. 

“Wow, that’s huge,” I tell Mom. “It’s funny the master bath is bigger than the office.” We laugh.

“It is, you’re right,” she says. “And wide. We have the ADA compliance.”

“Oh yeah. So these would have been narrower? These doorways?”

“Yeah, they are narrower,” she says. “You can look at the other ones and see. I didn’t make the whole house ADA compliant.  I didn’t think it was really necessary.”

“Really? But what if you end up in one of those bedrooms and then you can’t get in? Then you’ll have to do that after?”

I’ll have to, yep.  Then I’ll say, I guess I made a mistake.”

I laugh at this. “I made a mistake! I don’t belong in this wheelchair!”

“That’s it!”

The house is impressive.  Large windows, very open space with high ceilings.  But It’s clear to me that this place doesn’t resemble my childhood home at all. That feeling I had of familiarity, isn’t really here anymore. The neighborhood already looks so different. This house is a single story house that takes up most of the lot. There’s still a little room for landscaping. In earlier conversations ,Mom was 100 percent on board with only planting native grasses and flowers, xeriscaping most of it. But now she really wants another autumn blaze maple. So making concessions to the local ecology are still hard. 

All around us the birds are singing.

“And here’s our patio.”

“Nice!

And really our favorite part of the tour is when we see the life coming back. Things are growing outside.

“I wonder what that red bushy thing is up there,” I say, pointing.

“Oh, it’s called a smoke tree. That’s a survivor!”

“There’s something flowering right here that looks like something you planted,” I say. 

“Oh, I think that’s a poppy!”

“Is it? You planted those poppies, huh?” I ask.

“Oh, yeah! Years ago!”

“Oh, and look there’s some daylilies up there!” 

“Oh yeah. Great!”

“Those daylilies are gonna bloom a lot!”

“Alright! We have some survivors!”