Picked up a random poetry book From the crowded shelf. Quick easy hour read: Delight and wonder. Then, Found…
Earthquake Idaho 2020
A roar of wind hovers over the house, suddenly the floor shakes like we are being jerked around on a conveyor belt. There is a pause then another jerk like right before the roller coaster rises up over the crest of the hill and shoots down the track so fast you can only scream. The tree outside does not seem to falter, but I feel as though I am being pushed forward in an uncontrollable surge of energy.
I look to my daughters and try to remember what to do for safety during an earthquake. My brain is a wash till I suddenly think of people on the news in California after a quake saying they stood in the door or got under a table.
Olivia stands up and asks me what to do. A reasonable response is caught somewhere in my throat. My mouth is open, suddenly dry, in an unseen silent force field, unable to respond; my legs freeze me to the couch as though ice picks were suddenly holding me down. My heart flutters with the panic of a mother bird whose baby has fallen out of the nest.
Another pause follows another jerk. A ceramic book decoration falls off a nearby shelf. The room seems to darken from clouds hovering outside.
I stare out the window, waiting for a crack to suddenly emerge from the ground, or the tall oak to splinter downward. Nothing happens. The last rumble stops.
The national news reporter finishes up his latest reports on the COVID-19 pandemic. I wait for him to be interrupted by the Idaho reporter. There is nothing but a commercial break and silent surrealism from my family.
I finally let out a long breath at the quake’s apparent end. I picture the horrifying news pictures from the 1989 San Francisco earthquake when people were trapped, some crushed on the Oakland bridge. I still see the twisted, broken metal of cars, and the collapsed concrete of the images flashing over and over across the television as emergency workers work round the clock to try to rescue trapped individuals. That had terrified me as a child, leaving me many months of nightmares. I hadn’t felt the quake then, although I had been about 90 miles from the epicenter at the time. Mom had been driving my sister and I home from the local public library. We arrived home to see our neighbor come out of her house waving her arms wildly in the air and screaming there was an earthquake. Her excitement seemed strange to me, and yet, I felt strangely left out at not being able to experience the ground shaking.
Now thirty years later, I am left stunned. I have felt my first earthquake.
The house is still intact. We are safe. But the ground just had just been shaking. We are way more vulnerable than any of us realize. Blessed beyond measure, my family takes turns remarking on our shared experience.
The 6:00 local news comes on a minute later with breaking news about the earthquake. The newscaster seems startled as he talks without a script by explaining what they’d just felt in their studio and he reads his text messages from his children in Washington, who also felt the quake. Other people from around the northwest start texting him too, telling them they felt it from wherever they live. He reads off his news, unable he admits to be able to tell us anything else at this time.
Suddenly, the first time in two weeks, the news is not related to social isolation, unemployment, and healthcare shortages, all related to the global pandemic. Now the earthquake has brought a whole new experience to our social isolation.
As soon as the ground stopped shaking, we all got on social media and/or messages and started contacting our friends and family.
Now the sun has set on another strange day, the last one in March for the year. We definitely don’t need April Fool’s Day tomorrow.
Stay safe and healthy friends!