I knew a couple who lost their home to the “Oakland Hills Fire” (quite a spectacle that was from down in the flatlands) in 1991. They were vacationing in Nepal at the time, and in this antediluvian era the “word wide web” was but a mewling infant, and the internet was some years away from becoming a mass consumer phenomenon. Also, few people had mobile phones of any kind, and the state-of-the-art that year was costly, and the size of a shoe.

What I’m sayin’ here is that, on the far side of the world, Jeff and Alice weren’t keeping tabs on the news back home. They return on schedule, and their college-age son retrieves them at San Francisco Airport at the appointed time. “Anything happen while we were away?” “Yeah, you might say.”

Looking back on it years later, they observed that while they’d as soon it hadn’t happened, the loss of all their goods and chattels was oddly liberating: “We will never accumulate that much stuff again.” I venture to hope that there was a similar upside for you.

cordially,