All I Need Is The Air That I Breathe

Ep 43 Humorist/Playwright R. Eric Thomas Music Books for Holiday Gift Giving 2018

All I Need Is The Air That I Breathe

I guess I just assumed that by the time our dystopian future arrived, I would own a pair a leather pants and more survival skills. Or at least a sexy nickname like “Wolfgirl” or “Star.”

Instead, when our air turned toxic two weeks ago as a result of the smoke that drifted down from the horrendous Camp Fire in Butte County and, like so many Bay Area visitors, decided to just stay, we found ourselves trapped inside. It really did feel like the setup for a postapocalyptic YA series. Our normal Air Quality Index (AQI) rating is 20, but for almost two weeks the AQI hovered between 180 and 260 – in other words, you can see the air you’re breathing. As awful as the air quality was, it was worse knowing that what we were breathing in was remnants of the worldly possessions of almost 14,000 households, burned down 167 miles to the north of us. (For people closer to the fire zone, the AQI was in the 500 range.)

Over and over again I reminded myself how relatively fortunate we were.

After the Napa fires last year, I ordered cloth washable face masks for my family and stashed them in the emergency kit, along with a pack of disposable N95s that keep out the particulates so harmful to our lungs. Those came in handy for friends who were too late to get to the hardware stores where the masks sold out; Amazon’s “rush” orders of N95s were showing up days and days later. My mailman showed up one day in his open-air truck with his mask atop his bald head. “You have to wear that,” I pleaded to him. “The air is too bad.”

He sighed heavily. “I’m suffocating. I can’t breathe with it on, or off.”

When we bought this house 15 years ago we started the laborious and expensive process of replacing leaky single-pane windows with insulated, double-sash windows that actually closed tight. We did a couple of windows every year or two, and last spring finally replaced the last one, a picture window in the dining room that let in a small stream of air all day every day; it could only be closed by standing on a ladder outside and pushing the window shut, and even then it wasn’t a tight seal.

Between the new windows, rolled-up towels I placed at the bottom of the doors, duct tape with which I sealed up door frames, and an air purifier we ran on high all day every day, the air in the house smelled mostly fine.

That’s what privilege looks like, by the way.

People with leaky apartment windows didn’t have that luxury of clean interior air. When I drove out to get groceries, I saw homeless people in Oakland sitting on sidewalks or under overpasses, no masks, no windows, no walls to protect them from the smoke even a little bit.

I rely on my daily walk to keep me sane and centered, but we were told not to exercise outdoors or even indoors. After a week my knees and back hurt, and I was finding it hard to remember things or feel motivated to do anything that I usually enjoy and find therapeutic, baking or reading or talking to friends. Toward the end of our air crisis, we got really terrible news about a young person whom I barely know, and I couldn’t stop crying. Couldn’t. Stop. Crying. How in the midst of the end of the world do even worse things happen? I was cracking up.

By that time, it was a few days before Thanksgiving and people were fleeing the Bay Area like rats off a sinking ship. My social media feeds were filled with photos from Lake Tahoe and beaches on the coast with blue skies, all captioned with a variation of #freshcleanair. My husband and I both had to work, and our daughter is rehearsing Nutcracker every day. (No to indoor exercise, unless your tenth and final Nutcracker is three weeks away. More guilt that we made this exception.) I am used to feeling jealousy over people’s vacation pics on Instagram, but it’s weird to envy their breathing. I had to stop scrolling.

Finally on Tuesday afternoon, the creepy light that had been filtering through the house for so long changed and looked…normal. I hit “refresh” on PurpleAir.com for the millionth time and saw that the AQI had finally dropped to the “Moderate” level and ran outside. I couldn’t see the air. I could see the sun, and the thick hazy halo around it had almost disappeared. Up and down the street little kids were out in their driveways (pity those parents trying to keep small children entertained,) dogs were straining on leashes, my two favorite neighborhood walking ladies were once again on patrol. It was going to rain. It was glorious. Since then it has absolutely poured, giving the firefighters an assist although now mudslides have to be reckoned with. From the end of our street, we can see clear through to the Pacific Ocean.

And that was the end of our apocalyptic preview. For now. The Climate Change Report that got released on a weekend most people won’t pay attention says we’ll all experience it again, sooner and more frequently. Maybe your dystopian future looks like snow, or hurricanes, or drought. Oh, the variety!

As for us, we’ll trim back the trees to have defensible space around the house. We’ll donate to help the fire victims in Paradise, aware with every donation that it could just as easily have been us. We’ll hope that the incoming political leadership in DC finds the will and the smarts to counteract the destructive environmental record of the current administration. We will pray that technology and human ingenuity find a way to turn the ship before it’s too late for our children and grandchildren.

But to be on the safe side, “Wolfgirl Kho” is about to order another stash of N95s, an indoor air quality meter, and a pair of leather pants.

Also all out of face masks.

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