Imagine you suddenly have to flee your house and must make split-second decisions about what to save. What would you take and why? A framed photo? A family heirloom? A favorite souvenir, memento or trophy? A religious object? Some jewelry? Clothes? Your phone or computer?
For many people who survived the recent fires in Southern California, this was not a hypothetical question, but a painful reality.
In “What They Took,” New York Times editors share six stories from survivors of the Palisades and Eaton fires about what items they rescued from their homes and why they matter. Here is one of those stories — about Clarence Wright of Altadena, Calif., written by Ronda Kaysen:
After Clarence Wright fled his Altadena home and learned that it had been destroyed, he mourned the poems he had lost.
In spiral-bound notebooks, he had chronicled the lives of his children, explored his political leanings and mused about romance, friendship or a stranger at the airport.
The only poems he had left, he thought, were in three copies of a collection that he self-published 20 years ago. He had long kept those in his car so that he could reread his work on trips to the beach or the mountains.
“I would like to remind myself of who I am and who I was and where I came from,” said Mr. Wright, 75, who lived in his three-bedroom house for 40 years, raising four of his children alone after his wife died at an early age.
But as the fog of crisis recently lifted, he remembered that his spiral-bound notebooks might have survived after all.
It turned out that they were in a backpack that he had grabbed in the frantic early morning evacuation. The backpack had been sitting in his trunk for weeks.
“I was relieved because I thought that everything that I’d ever done would not exist anymore,” he said.
For Mr. Wright, the fire and its aftermath have resurfaced painful memories of his time as a Marine in Vietnam. He is now working on a new poem to make sense of those feelings after his home and community were destroyed.
“It brings out sort of an anger,” he said. “But in order to control that anger, I put it in words.”
— Ronda Kaysen
Students, read the entire article and then tell us:
If your home were in danger and you could only save a few treasured possessions, what would they be?
What story do the objects tell about you?
What’s your reaction to the objects — and animals — saved by the families in the article? Which items — and the stories of their rescue — were most interesting, memorable or moving?
For some students, the following question may not be hypothetical: Have you ever faced a natural disaster like a fire, flood or tornado — or a human-made disaster like a war — when you had to abandon your home quickly? What was your experience? Were you able to save any meaningful items, like the people profiled in these six stories were able to do?
Does the article change how you think about your own possessions or the meaning of home? How so?
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.
