Smoke on the water

It's 20-something years later so forgive me if my memory is hazier than Southern California's skies right now.

I must have been six or seven and I woke up after one of those kid nightmares that has you calling bloody murder for mommy and daddy. There were firefighters burning, and our house was engulfed in flames. I was following Dear Ma-Ma up the stairs, flames licking at the cuffs of my Superman PJ bottoms. My sister, all of three years old was there, wild-eyed fear twisting her face into a gruesome mask that was illuminated by the flames around us. Then I was screaming, and Ma and Pop were scrambling down the steps to make sure the cat wasn't strangling me (damn cat always had it in for me).

When Ma asked me what my dream was about I talked about the fire raging up the mountain from Palm Desert, east of Idyllwild. I worried about it reaching our house, and I was scared for the firefighters. All these thoughts about the fire were courtesy of TV news wonks and the orange, smoke-smelling hue the sky cast over our little town. At seven years old, when your girls have cooties and the number of Hot Wheels you owned correlated to your popularity in second grade, something so foreign as walking into your back yard to see ash dripping from the sky and the air smelling like God (or your higher power of choice - say Al Pacino) is BBQing a brontosaurus burger is scarier than the six-foot tall cockroach shadow (cast by the Chewbacca cardboard statue) you see when mom and pop turn off the lights for bed.

They didn't shelter me from the bad news that was overplayed by the media. Hell, I remember the Day Counter ABC News ran for the hostages in Iran (I know ... I'm old with a capital O). That's tough shit to digest when you're seven. I kept asking why don't they just sneak out a window when the guards aren't looking. See, I was even a problem solver back then.

I'm not saying Mom and Pop handled that rightly or wrongly - dinner time was news time, that's just how it was back then - it comes down to you can either hide the munchkins in a bomb shelter and let them emerge 18 years later (that works if Alicia Silverstone greets you at the door) or let them face the world's scariness and try to explain what's going on (that's how Wife handles me, so she's set for the Freeloader).

Every time fire season kicks up in SoCal I think back to that night when Mom explained that we were safe because the firefighters were the best in the world and they wouldn't let the fire get to our home. I guess that was good enough for me because I don't remember the rest of the conversation.

Today it was in the forefront of my bean more than other years because Wife, Freeloader and I had our second doc appointment - the heart beat visit. After the doc yanked away the microphone from my Mick Jagger grip as I karaoked "I can't get no satisfaction" she pressed it to Wife's belly and a few seconds later there was that rat-a-tat-tat of the Freeloader's heart beat ("Watch out Ringo, I think my Fish will kick your ass on the skins!"). Hearing that sound - that healthy sound - brought the reality of parenthood that little closer to home, too. It made me think, what would I tell my freeloader if it saw hell closing in on where grandma and grandpa and the aunts and uncles live? Would I mislead and lie, or straight shoot it as much as a four-year-old can take?

One of my favorite blog authors - Dad Gone Mad - gave me a hint on how to handle things, but I'm not sure if it's the right way. What do younguns (under 6) gain from not hearing the truth? Obviously not the whole "truth" handed to us by TV news, but I also believe they have a right to know that something dangerous is out there and we have to be careful. And with that said, the people working on controlling these bastard fires (oh, c'mon, the kid is going to hear bad words sooner or later ) are doing the best they can to keep everyone safe - yes, even Mr. Woofy the stuffed orange dog. Here's what Dad Gone Mad said, "It's hard to keep the kids from being scared, but the best way is to shield them from the televised images of crying people, burning homes and flummoxed public figures trying to be helpful. We rented Cheaper By The Dozen 2. The kids have watched it nine times."

TV news is to intense, and muddied by station managers' political ties, and like he says the images don't help calming the kids down. That job has to fall on the parent. Me and Wife ... well Wife, because I'll be running around the house screaming, "They're all going to burn. Why have you forsaken them Al Pacino?"

Hmmm, on second thought, that might not help. This Father shit is hard.

Stay safe friends and relatives, we're thinking of you guys and we're a phone call away if you need anything.