I remember...

This was written on October 17, 2014, 25 years after this fateful day. Posted it on FB and was told I should preserve this memory so that's exactly what I'm doing. :) 


I remember being home alone while my mom picked up my brother. I remember walking down the hallway to the living room to see what time the World Series was supposed to start. I remember never turning on the World Series because at 5:04 pm, the whole Bay Area came to a screeching halt due to a 6.9 earthquake. I remember hearing the rumble before I felt the shaking. I remember standing in the doorway between our kitchen and living room, watching as the kitchen cupboards were thrown open by the sheer force of the quake and the good china was dumped into the sink. I remember how it seemed like a year before the shaking stopped. I remember hearing nothing but the rumbling. When the earth literally stopped shaking, I remember seeing our entertainment center only being held up by its glass doors, right where I had stood just 30 seconds before. I remember the numerous aftershocks, some almost as big as the quake itself. I remember my best friend running down my street with her dogs in tow and she and I sticking together until our parents got home. I remember the hutch in my room toppling over and all of my Sweet Valley High books being strewn everywhere. I remember camping out in our family room because we had no power and no school for two days. And I remember that when we finally went back to school, all we could talk about was the earthquake. I remember seeing the TV and the newspapers and thinking how San Francisco looked like a war zone. And I remember that when they finally resumed the World Series, which would result in a 4-0 rout of the San Francisco Giants by my Oakland A's, it seemed to bring a sense of normalcy to an area that so desperately needed it at the time. I will never forget October 17, 1989, and I'm pretty OK with that because if I remember, it means I survived the quake when other people did not. So thanks for the rumbling warning, Mother Nature, because who knows what would have happened if I had been standing where that entertainment center had fallen...