Variations on a theme sparked by wildfires

My daughter lives in Los Angeles. She is seven months pregnant.

When fire flared up in the Hollywood Hills, she and her husband took the precautionary measure of leaving West Hollywood at least for the night. Too close for comfort, they reasoned, even if not an evacuation zone.

The Sunset fire was contained pretty quickly and they were back home the next morning.

I live 3,000 miles away, an hour north of New York City in the home my daughter grew up in.

Home can be a haunting word, especially in the wake of witnessing the apocalyptic destruction of the wildfires that decimated Los Angeles.

Before Dorothy can find her way back from the dream journey a tornado has thrust upon her, she has to say the magic words — there’s no place like home. With a click of her ruby red slippers, she makes a trope of what it means to be someplace that connotes comfort and love.

At the other end of the rainbow Thomas Wolfe conjures a trope of a different color with his sprawling novel, You can’t go home again. . . .

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