I’m still learning how dogged people can be in denial, even when their freedom or their lives are at stake.
Somehow, while we had all been busy, while we had been doing those small things that added up to living, the future had slipped into the present — and despite the fact that we had known that it would come, the overwhelming feeling, now that it was here, was of surprise.
The floods, the fires, the tornadoes, the hurricanes, the droughts, the water shortages, the earthquakes. . . . Why did I think it would nonetheless be business as usual? Because we’d been hearing these things for so long, I suppose. You don’t believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.
