An Earthquake Memory
On Wednesday, it will be the 30th anniversary.
At 4:31AM, the shaking starts. By the time I know an earthquake has struck, Sara is already out of bed. “Get to the door!” she yells, and I leap out of bed and join my fiancée in the doorway.
Like every Californian, I’ve been through my share of temblors. This is different. Instead of dying down after a few seconds of shaking, it intensifies. We aren’t just moving side to side, we are being thrown up and down as if in a giant wooden bouncy castle. The kitchen cabinets swing open, crockery and glassware leaping out and exploding in shards on the floor. The television crashes off its table, a huge mirror disintegrating on top of it. The bedroom bookcase comes down with a thump; a book hits me in my leg.
Sara and I hold each other tightly. “I love you!” she shouts. “I love you,” I yell back over the din. I am certain that these are our last words. No building can shake this hard and stand.
Stand it does.
After an eternity, the quake subsides. We are naked in a doorway, in the pitch black, surrounded by broken glass. There is a scream from the street. We let go of each other, and Sara somehow finds the flashlight that she keeps in her bedside table. We put on clothes and shoes and go check on her neighbors.
Sara has lost almost everything that could be broken. A few hours later, when I return to my own apartment five blocks away, I will find that I have fared little better.
We are lucky. This is the Northridge Quake, the costliest natural disaster in California’s modern history. It will kill 60 people, and the worst devastation will be in the San Fernando Valley and in Santa Monica, where Sara and I live. We will spend much of the rest of the week cleaning up, huddling with friends, sharing resources and stories.
But here’s the thing. It’s been 30 years since that morning, and what I remember best isn’t the roar of the quake, or the sound of the glasses disintegrating, or the bewilderment.
What I remember best is that when Sara said “I love you,” it was the only time she ever had said, or ever would say, those words first.
And when the shaking stopped and we stood there, naked and cold and together in the dark and the danger, all I could think was that I was without any doubt the very luckiest man in what was left of the world.