It was Saturday night and I
was going through my usual routine of desperately trying to fall asleep while
V. snuffled and snored next to me. I resisted the urge to reach over and click
the crown on my old Timex Indiglo watch with the old man expandable metal link
band picked up in a Salvation Army years ago to see what time it was, as
knowing the hour usually makes it that much harder to actually sleep while my
mind starts calculating how many hours until a respectable wake-up time and if
I just fall asleep right now I can get six hours…five…four…and I thought I felt the bed rumble. I
figured it must’ve just been V. exhaling a particularly raucous and rumble-y
snore as I was actually, maybe, drifting off but it was enough to get me to
High Earthquake Alert and I spent some more time tossing and turning and
wondering if I’d have time to grab my wedding rings off the dresser--certainly
not enough time to get the earrings out of the safe but maybe enough time to
grab boots instead of flip flops--if I had to run out the door to avoid the
roof caving in on me. I awoke at some point, again neglecting to check the
time, to hear the starlings outside the window and see that the sky had
lightened to grey. It was still early enough to flop over and sleep some more.
I got up later Sunday
morning and checked the Earthquake site, as I am wont
to do every single day upon waking and saw that there had been a particularly
huge quake in the Emilia-Romagna region north of here. Five point nine the
site said. Preceded by smaller ones. Followed by others, the aftershocks
causing more damage.
Four (or is it now up to
seven?) people died. Factories collapsed. Aftershocks caused clock towers to
fall. Houses are missing chunks of wall. Four thousand people are unable to
return home. In twenty seconds. God, I’m terrified of earthquakes.
The site showed the time of
the big quake as 4:03 “in the night”, as they say here. Four A.M. When the sky
is beginning to lighten and the birds starting to chirp.
Clearly, I am clairvoyant. The
feeling of impending doom that kept me up was my sixth sense. As I lay in bed
the night before, I felt on a subconscious level the imminent tremblor. Or
maybe I caused it with my thoughts, my impressive brain controlling the
movement of the earth’s plates. Or
maybe, the fact that I am constantly thinking about earthquakes, worrying about
what to do if one happens, endlessly mapping out my running routes for V. in
case there’s one while I’m out and he needs to tell the Civil Protection folks
where to search the rubble, maybe it’s just inevitable that every single quake
happens to coincide with my constant thought of them.
