An orange halo burned bright over the ink black night. I pinched my husband’s smartphone screen to get a closer look at the picture he just took. This was not how I’d imagined spending New Year’s Eve 2019.
“The fire’s at the other side of the lake. If the embers jump over, we’re toast,” he said in Spanish as I handed him back his phone. The warm glow from his mobile’s screen illuminated our kids’ faces. Both of their mouths drooped wide open. Luciano (my then nearly eight-year-old) snored to the left of me and Briella (my then nearly nine-month-old) slept to the right of me. Her breathing was abnormal.
I checked an app on my mobile, which told me the air quality was at a hazardous rating. Not again! had been blanketed by smoke and now the new year would be too. Our lives had been contaminated in a thick uncomfortable state for months.
We were stuck in at my tíos (uncle and aunt) Julio and Silvia’s holiday home. The roads back to Western Sydney were closed due to the bushfires. At that very moment, all I wanted to do was get our family into our little black car, drive back home and take our baby to see her doctor. No looking over my blind spot, just merging in and speeding off. But it wasn’t safe to leave even when it wasn’t safe to stay. We were simply made to wait for an evacuation text from government authorities. The night crackled at the pit of our stomachs like burning indigestion.
Outside, my husband and tíos cleaned the gutters of leaves and twigs. Blocked the storm pipes with duct tape and filled them with water. Just as ABC emergency radio had told us to do. Inside, I heard the constant spray of the hose over the rooftop as the bedroom clock ticked into the new year. To try and find some sort of calm, I searched within and found my late grandparents.
“Abuelos por favor protégenos. Traigan lluvia. Les pido por favor que cambien la dirección del fuego.”(Nan and Pop please protect us. Bring rain. I ask you to please change the direction of the fire.) I prayed to my grandparents as I held my two kids, their great grandchildren, in my arms. The winds eventually blew in our favour and the emergency broadcaster announced the roads were finally open. I like to believe they heard my call.
To try and find some sort of calm, I searched within and found my late grandparents
Death is an extension of life. In Uruguay we celebrate El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) on 2 November. We visit cemeteries and provide offerings to our loved ones passed and talk to them. When I was little and living with my abuelos, my abuela Alba use to say, “Internal dialogues are the tongues of our ancestors communicating with us.”
Back home, the doctors told me that my daughter had acquired a respiratory infection due to the prolonged bushfire-related air pollution. She was prescribed steroids. As I fed her the medication, I was oblivious to the fact that in a few months a pandemic would arrive. Such are the times I birthed my kids into. From , , and , guilt has become my new state of mind. Imagined conversations with the dead help me find atonement.
and two years later, July 2022. My guilt was at its deepest when my Facebook newsfeed inundated me with disaster stories, all too close to home. The drowned an entire children’s playground, people waited atop rooftops to be rescued in Londonderry and a landslide in swallowed a driveway. Yet, I never thought that I was going to receive a text message from the National Telephone Warning System with an evacuation order.
Natalia Figaroa Barroso. Source: Supplied
Outside my window, I saw our driveway was slightly puddled but nothing too bad. Not like the videos my Facebook friends were sharing. This couldn’t be happening to us? Could it? Before I began to doubt the scary words on my mobile’s screen, I started packing all our important documents and essential clothes. Passports, birth certificates, photo albums, underwear, socks, jumpers. I called my husband who was at work in the city, he was on his way but there were train delays due to the floods. I looked at my kids and felt the pang of shame once more.
“Mamá, how are we gonna leave without a car?” Luciano asked sleepily. The truth was I didn’t really have an answer. Instead of responding, I ignored his question and continued shoving our belongings into a carry-on bag I bought for holidays that never eventuated. With my hands busy, I imagined us fleeing. In my mind, I held my daughter on my hip as rainwater streamed by my feet. I’d have to push my son up the Jacaranda tree he planted as a toddler.
“We’re going to cast an ancient spell, mi amor,” I replied. My son’s face lit up brighter than the lightning outside
In order to calm down, I yet again found solace with the dearly departed. This time, I asked my late tía Chula for guidance and she sent me a memory. Crystal clear as the rain that dripped down my bedroom’s windowpane. I recalled her drawing a cross out of salt over her kitchen counter and encircling it with yerba on a night where rainwaters entered through her front door uninvited. “Uruguayan magic to stop the rain,” she whispered in Spanish into my imagination.
“Mamá, how are we gonna take all these things walking?” my son demanded as he tugged at my shirt. I was brought back to the present and out of the past, gifted to me by our ancestors. Luciano held onto our black cat Tenaza.
“We’re going to cast an ancient spell, mi amor,” I replied. My son’s face lit up brighter than the lightning outside. I would do anything for that smile. And if connecting with the ghost of my descendants is the only way that helps me circumnavigate climate anxiety as a parent, then so be it.
This article was published in partnership with Sweatshop Western Sydney Literacy Movement.
