What Would You Save?

Sometimes I play mind games with myself.  When I was a kid, whenever Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds was shown on TV (I'm a child of the pre-video/DVD/BlueRay days...hell, I remember when Beta was the latest and greatest, but I digress) I'd spend the next few days figuring out where I was going to hide when -- not if -- the birds waged their attack on my house.  My ultimate hiding place ended up being in the back of my bedroom closet which extended well back beyond the wall with some shelves off the end and to the side.  Kind of a bizarre set up because once the closet was full of clothes, you had to burrow in past them to reach the shelves.  Which made them, in my young mind, a perfect hiding spot.  Of course now my adult mind realizes that had the birds found me in there (and they undoubtedly would have) there would have been no avenue of escape.

The mind game I play most now is "what would I take if imminent disaster was about to wipe out my house and I had, like, 15 minutes to get out."  I play this game whenever the forest fire season starts to threaten communities or when earthquakes start rumbling up and down my coast.  And in this game, kids, critters, wallet and a change of clothes are a given and everything you take has to fit into whatever vehicle you own.  (I have a Prius C so not much space.)  Really makes you stop and consider what stuff amongst your stuff is the most important to you...the stuff you would grieve if it were gone forever.  And considering the amount of stuff in my house, there isn't much.

First, I would grab my computer.  All of my writing is stored there and I could never hope to recreate the stories and the novel that I poured my heart and soul into.  My Dad's and my dog's ashes.  Some special things people made for me:  intarsia bears, a child's chair and a stool made by my Dad; a carved loon crafted by a friend; a painted native drum designed and made for me for my retirement; some paintings done by my daughter.  A couple of cross stitch pieces I made myself.  A pair of salt and pepper shakers that belonged to my grandmother that I've loved since I was a kid.  And a metal sculpture of crows that my Dad gave me (it has a lovely story attached to it.)  That's it.  Kind of puts that attachment to stuff in perspective.

On another note...My daughter thinks I'm weird.  (Maybe you do too after reading about The Birds. But I challenge you to watch that movie and not try to figure out where you'd hide.)  Yesterday I was writing a scene for my new novel in which someone is being choked.  I was trying to describe the sounds the person was making and figured the best way to do that was to put my hand around my own throat, squeeze, and see what sounds I made.  My daughter came into my room thinking the dog was trying to hack up a fur ball to find me at my desk gurgling and trying out different sounds. Probably a good thing I don't own a gun.