The trouble is, my children are getting really good at disaster.

They know to ask about the day’s air quality first thing in the morning. It does, after all, determine whether they should plan on figuring out whose turn it is to jump on the trampoline later, or if they should instead start planning the indoor pillow forts they’ll build with their pod-mates when remote classes are done. My kids caught on to their dad and I talking about air quality during the fires that burned in the hillsides mid-August. We had a few weeks between the onset of those fires and the current ones raging around us, “up-valley”. Our children pretty quickly figured out that a yellow AQI meant they could talk their pod teacher into extra time outside. They also learned that orange and red meant they were going to be stuck inside all day. Again.

Recently, the suffocating “purple air” classification we saw in the 2017 fires swooped back with a foreboding vengeance. Many Napa families who did not live in evacuation zones drove as far away as they could anyway, to find family or friends with spare rooms and clean-ish environ. My own clan stayed home, but- kids being kids- they considered our worst day of air extra special. Not only were their Zoom classes cancelled due to evacuations and air quality, but they also got their very own N-95 masks. There’s not a hint of sarcasm in that sentence. My children literally skipped out the door, they were so happy. Blocking out 95% of non-oil based particulates is the new cool.

The weird facts of our daily life show up in such lighthearted ways through my children. Thankfully, unlike the 2017 fires, we have kept the television off in our household. It took my kids nearly a year to stop playing “journalist reporting on the fires” after we had emergency news coverage blaring in our living room throughout those days. (At the time, fires seemed like an anomaly rather than a dangerous norm. Now we quietly scroll through the newsfeed on Twitter while the kids brush their teeth at night.) The early reader book my five year-old is making now, however, starts with a picture of a baby bird surrounded by orange sky. “Because, Mom,” she explained, “of that orange sky we had before. Remember?” Few bay area residents could forget the day in early September, when our natural marine layer trapped heavy smoke and turned the skies dark orange all day. It muted shadows, sunlight, and- some would say- our general sense that life could ever improve- for a solid 24 hours. My daughter, however, seems to have stored away that memory as a good excuse to use her tangerine-scented marker.

Moments of laughter bubble up when I least expect them. Yesterday, it was was when the kids and I loaded into our truck in the morning. Thanks to the cool night air, condensation had collected on the windshield. When I turned on the windshield wipers to clear our view, my son pointed out that it was the first time in weeks that I had used the wipers for something wet. “You’ve been using them for ashes! Ashes are dry!” What ensued was the kind of self-satisfied goofy chuckle that can only come from the merry heart of a child convinced his joke is hilarious. Sure kid, a load of laughs. But he had a point. Lately, we have been using our wipers to sweep what looks like dirty snow flurries off the front windshield each morning. Fun fact: ashes, after settling overnight, pile up neatly on the long smooth blades of windshield wipers. And when you’re eight, it’s kind of fun to watch them gather and slurry off with that first sweep of the day. Kind of.

General good practice living as a child in pandemic (that’s right- we’re living through that too) brings with it its own sweet, if not ideal, situations. Going to the dentist, for example, used to be pretty cool. Now, planning ahead to see our local pediatric dentist is on par with planning a visit with Elsa, BB-8, and Harry Potter all combined. My daughter picked out her sequined dentist outfit, “sparkly because I’ll have sparkling teeth”, weeks in advance. During our lazy afternoons or a pause during snack time, the kids would ask how many more days until they got to go to the dentist’s office. We marked in on the calendar. We talked about it during Face Time with Nana. We fantasized about which of the children would need to get x-rays, and which color balloons they would choose afterward. When my kids finally did pad their little feet into the dentist’s office, due to COVID restrictions they floated into an office that was open, spacious, and much quieter that the pre-pandemic buzz of families we were used to. It felt like a private event, arranged just for my kids. No waiting required. Never mind that “other” family on the far side of the office, this was clearly a treatment reserved for royals. It’s a situation my children could get very used to. I hope that they don’t.

My children are lucky. While the earth is stilled by a virus, they remain in good health and good spirits. Cinders waft in the air when we should be catching whiffs of fermenting cabernet, but our own home remains secure. “We have our health and our home” sounds cliche, but it means a whole lot right now. I am watching my children thrive in what is undoubtedly the weirdest stretch in my lifetime. The kids’ social contacts have gone from many to few- but their number of laughs in a day has not dwindled. Their depth of love and delight in the mundane remains as constant as it was a year ago. And if their constant thrum of activities and locales has been reduced, their capacity for joy has not.

My kids know to check the air, let Mom skim the news, and pick the right mask on their way out the door. We are living on the periphery of disaster, but the kids are getting good at this.