A Time Between Storms

Santa Anas are formidable winds, howling down over the high desert like blasts of hot air from heaven. They wiped the skies clean of clouds and smog over the weekend with a rush of energy that left us all a little dazzled.

I became aware of them in the middle of the night when the branch of an oak tree began rattling against a window. I thought it was rain at first, and bolted upright in bed to await the downpour.

Almost instantly I realized it was wind, but the experience reminded me of all the waiting we had done after that roaring killer storm just two weeks ago. And it reminded me of Larry, who is dying of cancer.

I had stopped by to see him during what was supposed to be a lull between storms. He was sitting by a window that looked out toward the Santa Monica Mountains, absorbing all he could of life during the time he had left.

His house had weathered the first storm OK, and now, like everyone else, he was waiting to see what the second one would bring.

“Waiting,” he said, coughing slightly, “is the hard part. You never know what’s going to happen next.”

I’m not sure whether he was talking about the interim between storms or about himself, suspended between life and the unknown.

Later, as I drove around Topanga, I saw how much waiting was actually going on. Nothing was more symbolic of it than a Caltrans truck with a blinking sign that flashed “Residents Only” to traffic entering the canyon.

The blinking was set on a regular rhythm and, like the ticking of a clock in a quiet room, emphasized the time we were going to have to wait to see what happened next.

A highway patrolman sat in his car near the crest that overlooked the San Fernando Valley, waiting for the next emergency.

A bulldozer operator stood near a bridge where the highway had been seriously undermined, waiting for truckloads of boulders.

Volunteers joined homeowners in piling sandbags along Topanga Creek, where a roaring flood tide threatened homes. And when the piling was over, they watched the water and waited.

It was an unsettling time. The sky would alternately darken and lighten, as though God were playing games with those who looked upward.

“Here it comes,” we said when the day seemed to go suddenly black and the wind began and a torrent of water spilled from the heavens. But it stopped suddenly and the clouds drifted off and nothing else happened.

“Whatever became of showers?” Larry asked. His face was gaunt and drawn. “It’s not raining at all one minute and then it’s pouring. Doesn’t it sprinkle anymore?”

From his window, he could see the street next to his house. Neighbors had gathered on a corner and were chatting happily. Calamity creates block parties even as it breeds grief.

We are one in disaster. In Topanga, old-timers mingled with yuppies whose very presence they scorn. Yuppies loaded sandbags to save the shacks of old-timers they could never understand.

We honored the human spirit in that storm, even as we shouldered the burden of not knowing what lay ahead.

At my own home, the waiting was evident. As I entered, the televised image of young Adam Paul Bischoff was on the screen, his terrified face above water, his mouth forming the words “Help me.”

Rescue workers reached for the boy from bridges that spanned the L.A. River, dangling near the surface of the water, arms outstretched, only to miss him by a sigh.

We watched the screen in horrified fascination to see him swept downstream by the fierce current, a hand rising briefly from the river, reaching backward to where life still existed, and then disappearing.

We watched him vanish, and we waited.

I looked around my house. Towels were piled on a table to soak up the water that seeped into a rear bathroom.

I opened a back door and cleaned a drain that had clogged with mud. On the deck, I emptied toy buckets that had filled with water. And I waited.

The second storm never came. The body of Adam Bischoff was found downstream. The waiting was over.

So why write about it now, weeks later, when the sky is a breathless blue and even the wind has died to a whisper?

Because I realized that night as I listened to the Santa Anas how unnerving the unknown can be.

Waiting, as Larry said, is the hard part. We huddle like children at the door of eternity. And though the storm is gone, the waiting is never really over. We are all, in a way, endlessly between storms.

The best we can hope for is that we endure each one with equanimity and, like Larry, get on with absorbing all the life we have left.