Mom’s the Word column: When the news is not good, a moment of grace amid the wildfires

Little treasures. Sylvia Warwick was thinking of them as she sat on a gray, metal chair at the Pasadena Convention Center the morning the Eaton Fire forced her and her son from the home they have loved since 1971.

Warwick, 87, and her son 65-year-old son Kevin had grabbed some paperwork, warm clothes, a flashlight, and her cellphone (Kevin doesn’t own one, he doesn’t like those things.) They drove to the parking lot of a Stater Brothers until police told them the fire was coming near. They...