On March 18, 2020 at 7:09 am Utah had a 5.7 magnitude earthquake.
I remember laying in bed, and looking at the fan shaking in the ceiling above me. What was happening flashed into my consciousness before a cognitive thought could even take hold, and I ran from my bed as fast as impulse could carry me.
“It’s only an earthquake” Wyatt called after me as if that was somehow supposed to be reassuring.
But I already knew what it was. And I knew what he meant by his effort at comfort. I knew the house wasn’t going to fall down. I knew we were physically safe in our home. All of that was part of my being in that initial flash.
But where were my babies. Were they scared? Were they upset? That was the impulse that carried me so swiftly from my bed. “I’m checking on the babies” I called back to Wyatt in response, for by now I was halfway down the hall to Nate’s room.
The shaking stopped, and I gathered all sleepy, unconcerned littles, around me in my own bed. I told them what had happened, reassured them of their safety, and we all cuddled and spent the rest of the morning on my bed.
I point to that moment as the moment I broke.
The previous year, and even really the previous three, had been the longest and most emotionally battering of my life.
But the previous year had been crippling. There were many days when even getting out of bed was beyond my power, and I would only get up to attend to some child’s needs, and then slip back to my sanctuary as soon as I could be missed.
Everything was hard.
Everything hurt.
Everything was inside out and upside down and I just didn’t know how to move forward, or even hold still, in the pain of the things happening in my life.
And then that flood of worry, that knowing that my kids might be frightened, without anyone there to comfort them was too much. It was just too much.
And at that moment I realized how pathetic and inadequate I really am. I can’t fix everything. I can’t even anticipate everything that will need to be fixed. The world is bigger than me. The powers that be can and will and do swallow me whole, and the kids will be left to what ever they have inside of them to sink or swim against their own tides.
I have never recovered from that feeling. I still feel broken more days than not. I don’t spend as much time in bed as I used to, but I still feel fragile and as if I live with tragedy while all the world moves on in ridiculous merriment around me.
The picture at the head of this post is me and the kids hiking, later in the day on the day of the earthquake. Utah was under an order from the governor to “shelter in place” – aka – stay home. But I needed to get out. It meant we had the mountain and the trails to ourselves.