I spent my childhood in the Palisades homes my mother cleaned. We’re also grieving.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up to Mami, standing outside the door of a Numi room with a burning paper.

“This was in the park of tomatoes,” she made clear, still in the bathroom robe.

I looked at the paper skeptical. An advertisement for destruction from fire burns 10 miles away, carried by violent winds to the small Silf Lake Silver.

The day before, Mami announced that the family she worked with 36 years ago was postponed to her house in the Pacific.

She said to me: “La Sherra said that she only caught important documents and left.”

If you are honest, I must say that at that stage on Tuesday, I assumed that the fires would be extinguished before they arrived at their home. The beautiful homeland that my mother was interested in most of her life was not always prejudiced in my mind.

Mami came to Los Angeles in 1982 as a refugee in Al Salvadori Civil War; In the same year, I started working as a living housekeeper on Palmira Street in the Pacific Ocean. I love Mami Mrs. Kony and her children. She worked with the family throughout her pregnancy with me, and when she was born, she called me the name of the family daughter.

I remember their home and the church -like windows facing the luxurious backyard. It was not a big house. I felt knowledge, just like families on television.

This is how Mami came to work with Mrs. Chris in Toyopa Drive, the house that has become my second family home. When her family went on trips, we were hosting and spent days with their beautiful golden recovery-my sisters and I in the swimming pool were swimming with Cooper until we got out Mami.

On normal days, when Mami worked, one of us was sick or on vacation, and there was no one for the child, we took us to work and ordered us to stay in the lame and left the road. But how can a curious little girl do it in a large house full of treasures? Mrs. Chris had the statues, the hour and the tools that we had never seen before. Once, Mrs. Chris Mami asked if she could take out. That was my first trip to a real library and the first time I own a new book directly from the shelf. It was a luxury that I never dreamed of.

Mami was working simultaneously a few days in another house, with Mrs. J. on Chauteauqua Street, the family with which she worked the longest and at the end full time.

If I closed my eyes, I can expose their home map while standing in my childhood – the girls ’bedrooms that I was ignoring and watching MTV when I called me MAMI accompanying her to work; The laundry room where she heated Senor shirts; The pictures of their daughters when young girls were from the bright face, the house of the young garden, where my sisters and I demonstrated with the presence of white snow; Their home theater, which felt like a cinema museum.

Each family is part of my family’s memories. When Babi died, Mrs. J. And Sinnor to his aftermath. They sat in Pio surrounded by the huge Salvadorian family, and when I took a look at them while giving Abe, I saw their eyes wet with tears. Two years ago, Mami retired, but we were in close contact. They often expressed their pride in my writing career. When Mami was diagnosed with breast cancer in May, Mrs. J. called and continued to verify.

I don’t know a life without them.

My mother and sisters playing with Cooper, the dog in one of the Pacific Palisades houses that her mother worked as a housekeeper.

(Yesika Salgado)

On Wednesday, January 8, she woke up to Palisades, which is consumed by severe forest fires. The bus road was Mami for nearly 40 years in fire. I thought about all the women, and the nannies and nannies were hunted during the bus journey for two hours in each direction. A woman at the Tamales and Champurrado bus station sold them while they were leaving for work. She was an unannounced sister walking daily from east to west. In my twenties, I became one of them also – a educator in Palisades, parking lots in Santa Monica and Westwood, a papyrus sales colleague.

Through Instagram, I was in contact with Anna, who is also a Salvadorian woman who arrived in Los Angeles in 1982. The sighs suppressed me about the family she worked with, her love for them and the pride that she was sponsoring their beautiful home in Bienveneda place.

“Everything is new, I remember it was burning, it is a new wave of sadness,” she said. The family has teenage children and all their friends lost their homes. It worries about the shock. Remember us on bus stations, women walking to their homes, Al -Rallafat and Gelason, where we all had lunch, church and park. Anna worked only one day a week, but she caused not to ask the other housekeeper for phone numbers.

“How will we all communicate now?” I wondered.

At the house on Wednesday, I was hoping that the home of Mrs. J. I got to one of her daughters and told her Mami and I was praying. Then, when we saw the news, I saw a correspondent standing on Chauteauqua; Everything was succeeded by smoke and ash. Mami’s eyes are reddish and tear. Soon after, I received a message from their daughter:

“Yesika, the house went. I am still thinking about love, care and hard work that your mother puts in this house and takes care of our family. I will never forget to celebrate her nationality there.”

I read the message to Mami and left sadness and tears filling our living room. Throughout the day, I recalled the clothes that you take care of with love, the rooms that I knew in every corner of the corners, and the office that took it a long time to clean it. This wonderful house. Its keys are still hanging here in my house.

“The last thing remains,” Mami said.

We do not know the certainty of what happened to the other homes in which I worked over the years – we did not continue in close contact with those families as we did with Mrs. J. But the fire maps show them in the burn road.

I know this city in the way I know sorrow. I can taste it before I can give it words. My parents found a shelter and each other here. I was born in this extended city and loved it strongly. I do not know Angelino, this destruction was not touched. From Altadena black historically to the containers made my people beautiful daily. The pain is not measured.

The fires burn – the city is still alert. But the only thing that I know is true for all of us: nothing can destroy what is already in our hearts, in our blood.

Yesika Salgado is a Los Angeles -based poet, Los Angeles, who writes about her family, culture, city, and fat body. Salgado is a final in the National Poetry Championship twice and won the Latin International Book Award for 2020 in poetry. She is an internationally recognized positive advocate and a selling book author “Corazón”, “Tesoro” and “Hermosa”.