You know it’s going to be an
off-kilter day when you wake up with a neck kinked so badly that you can’t turn
your head and it’s not even the worst thing that happens before you get out of
bed that morning.
Today is St. Patrick’s Day
for some people and plain old Monday to others. And for those of us who live in
Los Angeles, it’ll be remembered for The Shamrock Shake earthquake that jolted hundreds
of thousands awake at 6:25AM and started our days and weeks off a little more
frightened than normal.
This summer marks 15 years
that I’ve lived in Los Angeles and I’ve experienced my share of quakes during
that tenure. But today’s quake was a bit different than every other I’ve experienced,
and if you haven’t lived through one, it is definitely an experience. And not
the kind you want to unnecessarily have.
Before today I hadn’t actually
felt an earthquake in many years, maybe five, probably more. Maybe it’s because
I grew up in Ohio where earthquakes occur only slightly more frequently than
Halley’s Comet appearances and its more novelty than anything else when they do.
Or maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up here in LA, as my wife did, and wasn’t
forced to live through the destruction of “the big one”, the Northridge Quake, which
celebrated its 20th anniversary just a few weeks ago, as she did. It’s
not that I don’t take tremblors seriously, but I’ve just never let them burrow
into my psyche. Until today.
Living in fear is a difficult
way to make it through calendar flips and not something I like to propagate. But
now that I have my two boys I guess my view is a bit askew.
You see, this morning when I
felt that first telltale shake, my 4-year-old Little Dude had just woken up and
was in the bathroom for his morning pee. It took me a second to calculate what
was happening when I felt the ground’s movement and I’ve been through quakes
before. Imagine being a toddler whose life awareness is expanding exponentially
on a daily basis. To him, everything is still new and as he reminds me several
times per day, “Everything is Awesome!” Thankfully my son doesn’t yet know
about the reality of natural disasters. To him, this was like his first time in
a bounce house again. After a minute of curiosity, he just wanted to watch
Chuggington.
But what if we hadn’t been so
lucky as to only suffer a few tipped picture frames today? The quake’s
epicenter was about 10 miles from where we live, which is not very far in earthquake
terms. How do we explain these things that no one wants to talk about to our kids,
these mysteries of the unknown that appear in our realties usually only after
affecting us in very destructive ways.
These local anchors were not expecting this today.
The first inclination
might be to move. I knew that was where Mrs. Dude’s mind was headed as soon as
I felt the first big wave. But no place in this country, or any other, is
perfect. Just yesterday L.A. had cloudless blue skies and 95 degree “winter”
weather despite much of the country still being buried waist deep in snowdrifts
despite Spring’s commencement just a few days away. The South has hurricanes, North
has blizzards and Midwest tornados, not to mention dust storms, thunderstorms,
drought and other plagues that Mother Nature unexpectedly confronts us all with
to keep us on our toes and insurance companies in business.
As parents we don’t
have time to freak out about everything that could happen. We must be prepared
for those freak instances when they actually do occur, inevitably at the worst
possible times, like the infant who desperately needs a new diaper the moment
you pull out of the driveway. Managing adversity and predicting the
unpredictable are instincts that parents must possess for our children are our
most valuable assets, the kind worth sacrificing everything for if need be.
So as the ground
shook, and my older son finished his business, my next thought was where’s the baby and should we go grab him?
Checking the video monitor next to my bed he was sound asleep in his crib and
had somehow missed the whole event, true irony considering how light of a
sleeper he usually is. Though the grass may always seem greener on the other
side after one of these incidents shakes us up, we regrouped as a unit and
moved forward with our day. Unafraid.
