Twenty Seven Years Ago: A Moment in My Fourth Decade

I remember it like it was yesterday.  I awoke to shaking.  I could see pieces of acoustic ceiling floating down from the vaulted ceiling of our master bedroom.  It felt like our house was going to fall down.  I had two immediate thoughts. Our daughters. That's what I thought of right away. I jumped out of bed, not even thinking about what one is supposed to do during an earthquake.  A huge shake threw me against the wall of our bedroom, but I managed to stay upright and rush to our hallway. We had a two story house, and the bedrooms were on the second floor.  As I entered the foyer just outside our master bedroom, another jolt threw me against the wrought iron railing that overlooked our spiral staircase.  I could just as well have been thrown over the railing, but fortunately I wasn't.  

In fact, it wasn't until a couple of days later that I would notice the nearly half an inch indentation of the wrought iron that my knee had caused when it struck the railing.  I still managed to stay upright as I rushed to my daughter's rooms.  My oldest daughter, Raishel, was standing at her doorway, looking dazed and confused.  She was ok. My first thought at that moment was to protect my youngest daughter, Justine, who was soon to turn three.  I ran into her room, picked her up out of bed and turned around, another jolt throwing me against the wall, where I slammed my arm that was holding her.  What I did next only demonstrated the fear I felt from this magnificent earthquake. 

I carried her out of the room and ran down the stairwell, two steps at a time. Somehow, I managed to get to the bottom of the stairs and could see our double dead bolted front door wide open from the force of the shaking.  I ran out the door to the front lawn and put Justine on the grass.  It was 4:31 am and it was still dark out.  My instinct at that moment was to turn around and go back into the house for Raishel.  But Justine started crying.  She didn't want to be left alone.

I remember feeling an immediate quandary.  What do I do? I really didn't have a choice.  I couldn't leave my nearly three year old daughter alone in the dark in front of our house. Besides, the shaking had stopped and I could hear my wife telling me to stay outside.  She was with my older daughter, and they were doing the correct thing by staying inside under a doorway until the shaking had subsided.  They then made their way downstairs and outside to our front yard, where we all were now together.  I stood up, felt a pain in my knee, and passed out.  I have always had a propensity to get vasovagal, and the huge adrenaline surge, plus the pain in my knee, had certainly contributed to that happening to me.

When I came to, there we were, waiting to see what would happen next.  There are many stories that I can relate to the 1994 Earthquake.  Some were related to work, others were related to training for my first marathon.  Yet another ended up leading to changing jobs and moving halfway across the country.  That's for tomorrow's blog.