The L.A. Fires Taught Me How to Accept Help

Until three weeks ago, my idea of accepting help was allowing another driver to let me in front of him while changing lanes in stop-and-go traffic, a gesture I always met with a hand-wave of gratitude that doubled as an apology for the inconvenience. Maybe this is nothing to be proud of, but, as a rule, nothing makes me prouder than being self-reliant. Nothing makes me feel more like myself than not asking for anything.

So suffice it to say that since Jan. 8, when the house I was renting in Altadena, Calif., burned to the ground, turning all of my material possessions into ash, I haven’t quite been myself.

I’ve had to accept more help in more forms from more people — friends and strangers alike — than in the entire preceding 50-plus years of my life. I’ve slept in their guest rooms, eaten their home-cooked meals, borrowed their clothes, used their addresses to receive mail and introduced my enormous shaggy dog into their homes and backyards. I’ve accepted donations of pet supplies, beauty supplies, podcasting equipment and cleaning supplies, which I’ve used to wipe the floor after my dog leaves a trail of dirt and debris in his wake. As of a few days ago, I’ve accepted an offer to stay in a friend’s small guesthouse for “as long as you need.”

I pray my parents aren’t watching any of this from the afterlife. In their household, self-sufficiency was a religion. My father had grown up very poor, raised by a single mother who took in boarders rather than accept assistance. He carried those values with him even as he resented the conditions that came with them.

My mother made it clear that imposing on anyone for just about any reason — even asking for a ride home from school from a friend’s parent who was going that direction anyway — was an almost unthinkable transgression. Trick-or-treating at Halloween was likened to begging. When my father, alone in our suburban house, had the first of three heart attacks at age 49, he walked to the hospital rather than call for help. Decades later, when my mother lay dying in her small apartment, she became insistent that we financially compensate the kind neighbor who’d offered me a spare bedroom.

“But people want to help,” I explained. “Refusing kindness is a form of unkindness.”

I didn’t entirely believe my words even as I said them. I was my parents’ child. But I could ask for help on someone else’s behalf.