Always the Small Things
There are nights when a town discovers what it is made of, and there are other nights when it discovers what it is willing to evacuate. Sunday night (Aug. 23) in Reno was one of the latter, with families being moved out ahead of the fire while police officers worked around the clock to keep people safe. It was not the sort of evening anyone would put on a tourist brochure, unless it came from the Department of Emergency Management.
The officers had plenty to do. Fires have no respect for property lines, family schedules, dinner reservations, or the comforting human belief that disaster ought to make an appointment before arriving. Officers went from house to house, helping families leave before the flames could decide for them.
Then a little girl appeared.
She ran up to one of the officers and offered a hug. This was already an unusual event, because police officers are accustomed to people approaching them with complaints, questions, accusations, paperwork, or the solemn announcement that somebody's neighbor is doing something suspicious with a garbage can.
A child arriving with affection was practically an administrative anomaly. Then she handed her a flower.
It was a small thing, picked from her own garden only minutes before she and her family had to leave their home. She had apparently decided that if the house might have to be abandoned, there was still time to conduct one final piece of important business.
The officer accepted the flower. The little girl looked up at her and told her, “Be safe.”
There are many things a police officer can carry into a dangerous night: a radio, a flashlight, protective equipment, paperwork, keys, and the accumulated weight of knowing that somewhere behind every door may be a frightened family waiting for help. But there is not much room in a police vest for a garden flower.
She found some, and kept it there for the rest of the night.
Now, I have spent enough time observing the human race to know that we are capable of constructing enormous machines, arguing about matters nobody understands, and producing laws so complicated that a lawyer occasionally needs another lawyer to explain them. We have invented devices that can tell us what the weather is doing three thousand miles away, while failing to tell us where we left the automobile keys.
Yet every once in a while, a child comes along and demonstrates that civilization may not be entirely lost.
That flower did not stop the fire. It did not extinguish a single flame, move a single evacuation order, or rescue a single house. It possessed no political influence whatsoever, which probably explains why it was so effective.
It simply reminded one exhausted officer that the people she was helping were not merely names on an evacuation list. They were families. They were children. They were people who noticed when somebody stood between them and danger.
And so, while Reno faced a frightening night, a little girl performed the smallest duty of citizenship imaginable. She gave away something beautiful, told a stranger to be safe, and went with her family.
The officer still carries that flower.
Perhaps that is how a community survives a fire, not merely by engines, hoses, sirens, and evacuation orders, but by remembering that kindness can still grow in a garden, even when the world outside is burning.
