What’s your thing? You know, that store you’d like to get locked up in all night? Mine is pharmacies. I love them. I get high just driving past a Walgreens. For me, they signify good things. Lavendar foam bath, stocking up on bulk packages of snow-white cotton wool pads, keyring gadgets you’ll never need, oversized bags of Jellybellys, and the end to flu.
The pharmacy is always your first stop after finally getting a diagnosis on mystery ailments. Yes, there is a joyous end to back pain/energy depletion misery/sinus pain. I have been to pharmacies a lot in the last week, nursing flu. Every time I go in, I stockpile on promotional cosmetics. Buy three, get three. If there ever was an earthquake of magnificent proportions (not the one of 4.6 the other day) I could go for weeks on the face-wash I have stored.
Talking about earthquakes, why is it no matter how much you prepare, when they do eventually hit, we always freeze?
My mom (who is still staying, and might be till the end of time) has been keeping her handbag at the front door in the event of a shake. Yes, she’s kind of paranoid. When I left her alone one evening to attend bi-monthly writer’s group she made me place the emergency kit backpack next to her handbag so she could make one big sprint. This is amusing if you have lifted it and seen how heavy that pack is, and also if you happen know anything about my mom. These days she seldom sprints anywhere. Or lifts anything heavy. What slowness of pace issues she has are considerably worsened by her directional deficiencies.
She said she wanted to run outside the building if there was an earthquake, which I told her was expressly the opposite of the advice we are given. We’re told to stay in, and cower under a heavy piece of furniture. A bed or desk. I am laughing even now as I imagine her doing such a things. No, she wants to rather run out, and swerve the collapsing buildings in the narrow street. Ok, I capitulated, as one does so often with one’s mother. “Then take a left UP the street”, I instructed. “There’s a park at the top of the clearing and we’ll meet you there.” Lord, she can’t remember left from right. How are we going to get this to work?
Then it happened. We had just got back from the SFO. Alan had a flight to Chicago at 6am and no amount of begging would let me off the hook. He said he wanted me to take him. Cabs be damned! So, nursing approaching flu, we both climbed back into bed for a morning nap on our return. It was between dreams that I felt the bed shake. The shaking of its legs reminded me of how I’d put it together 5 years ago, and of how it can be wrenched back apart all too easily. The windows started rattling too, but we’d had a windy few days and this was not unusual. The bed shaking was a whole different ballgame. So I hopped out of bed, like I’d been shocked. I remember thinking how shamefaced I would be explaining to people my whereabouts at 10am on a weekday. But then again I was glad I’d finally remved that bed from above my bed – beginner’s stupidity. Walking down the passage tenderly, stopping to listen every few steps, I reached the open door to my mom’s room, where she was lying, eyes as wide-open as her door.
“Was it an earthquake?” she asked quietly, as if it was still in the room and she didn’t want it to hear. “Yes,” I said, proudly, “it was”. I love having visitors experience this fear. Leaving a nation where adrenalin is the staple food, to live in the land of safety and security, I miss that excitement of possibility. I want tourists to know we live on the edge. It’s worth it. San Francisco is that beautiful.
But yes, we’re also shit-scared. “I thought you’d come in and jumped on the bed, but when I opened my eyes, I saw I was still alone…” she said, confused still. And it was then I noticed her abandoned handbag, it’s contents disgorged on the bureau. She used to do this every night when I was growing up. Everything would be orderly placed into piles – coin purse, cellphone, mascara, sunglasses. She’d say it was a metahpr for the organising of her mind. I’d always laughed, thinking about how the contents of her mind looked as jumbled and chaotic as her handbag did inside. It was then, seeing itunpacked and unready to go that I knew she’d really settled in my home and my city, and having experienced our fear, was no longer in fear.
