It's true. I've changed. For starters, I look a lot older than I used to. It's incredible, really. Prior to the birth of Connor, I actually had muscles and was fit enough to complete a triathlon and bike across the Loire Valley a couple of months later. Now? Not so much. The other thing that differs greatly about me of late is that I've turned up the crazy irrational part of me by several notches. It happened the first time I held Connor. I knew then that my job was to protect this little person with all my might - because nobody could ever love him like I do. And that feeling just multiplied when Helen came into my life 26 months later. Let's just say, I take my job at protecting these kids seriously.
Flashback to a beautiful blue skied day in September a few months after Ed and I had gotten married and purchased our first home. The weather was perfect.
And then planes starting falling from the sky.
I was intensely aware that my life partner was sitting a few blocks from the capitol, and I was sitting a few blocks from the White House and the IMF. When the first plane struck the World Trade Center, I called Ed. The usually wrong and irrational part of me was ablaze. I advised him to leave his building. But Ed, being the calm partner in this duo, sat there. He doesn't rattle easily. The second plane hit and then he started to get a little bit nervous, but I don't think he was really bothered until the Pentagon was in flames and there were (mostly inaccurate) news reports of all sorts of damage flying fast.
Our reactions to this event describe us perfectly.
Today, when the earthquake struck, I was in the dentist's office. I felt it before anyone else, I hopped out of the chair, and reached for my cell phone. My absolute first thought was that DC had been bombed. And I needed to get in touch with my children's babysitter and confirm they were OK. Before I had dialed the phone, it became obvious that the shaking lights and dental equipment were being driven not by some explosive force, but rather, by an earthquake.
The crazy thing is this. Ed was downtown at his office, and do you know what his first thought was?
A bomb.
I'm not even kidding here - September 11, 2001 has meant that when something happens that, in Ed's words "is clearly not nothing", his first thought is that we are under attack.
And that's really what a lot of people here thought.
Which is why the earthquake was so freakin' scary. Just like on September 11, 2001, for the most part, we were all sitting at our desks (or in the dentist's office, as it were) experiencing the calmest day possible. And then strange things started happening.
The earthquake? It clearly wasn't a disaster. A couple of vases fell off a shelf to their demise that belonged to my former au pair, all of the pictures in my home now hang with a slight tilt, and several drawers slid open as if they existed merely to punctuate this event with their thud as they became ajar.
But my heart raced for a whole lot longer than it did back in 2001. This time, I had a lot more on the line. I had those two little people (one of whom slept through the whole thing, the other of whom took cover in my bed next to the sleeping one and fell to sleep instantly herself).
I am changed. I think we all are.
Elaine
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