Simply Everything

By Peter K. Lam

I remember an event that happened late last year in 1999. I think it was in either November or December when a massive earthquake rocked Southern California. I was soundly asleep at 3:00 AM that Saturday morning when I was jolted awake by the earthquake. While I was sleeping I could feel the bed move up and down and up and down as though my bed was suddenly afloat in water from a flash flood that occurred over night.

I didn’t get up from my dreamless sleep for the rocking feeling was somewhat soothing. Almost simultaneously after I felt the swaying of my bed, the blinds for the window next to my bed started to rattle violently. The aqua blue blinds looked like obsidian in the dark as it swayed back and forth, ramming toward the window over and over. I could hear a loud rumbling sound almost as loud as thunder. That was when I realized that I was experiencing an earthquake!

I literally leaped out of bed, I had time to glance around my room and it looked as though the world had gone mad! Like the ocean, the soothing wavy feeling quickly became rough and violent like raging surf. My vision blurred from all the movement like someone had socked me in the face with lightning quick and thunder powered punches.

Once I got to the doorway of my bedroom, my mom and dad had already awakened along with both my grandparents and my older brother. For a moment there I saw my whole family and it hit me. When I saw my family holding one another in fear and panic during the earth-shattering quake, I wondered if that would be the last time I’d ever see them. I feared that this quake could be the “big one” that people talked about that was bound to rip the San Andreas Fault. My body grew all tense and I wanted to tell all my loved ones how much I loved them for fear that this could be our last meeting.

Everything was shaking but in my eyes I saw everything in slow motion. My dad held my mom tightly, grasping her and stood in the doorway holding on to the doorframe tightly to keep from falling down. My grandpa and grandma stood together underneath their doorway and held each other tightly. My brother held on to his doorframe as well and I could see fear and panic deep in his eyes. Seeing my family this way shatter my soul into millions of tiny little pieces. I had no doubt that we all thought that this was it. The end of the world was among us and nothing could stop our fate.

All of this happened in a split second but it felt like an eternity to me. A few seconds later, the violent earthquake started to die down.  The feeling of rocking about in rough surf slowly reduced itself back to a soothing rowing. When I realized that perhaps the worst was over, my body relaxed and all of my anxiety was relieved. When this was all over we went to watch the news and discovered that we experienced a 7.0 earthquake centered deep in the Earth’s crust.

I never lived my life the same after this incident. Life just went on the next day like nothing had happened. People acted normal but I will always remember the horror I experienced. The quake moved me to accomplish things that I want to do. Life is so precious and you never know when some kind of catastrophe might happen which motivates me to get things done.