It was 1971 as I remember. It rocked me out of bed at 6:01 a.m. Another big one hit maybe two minutes later, knocking me back into bed. I heard my son in his bedroom crying for me, obviously very frightened. I tried to get to him quickly but slipping and sliding over the books that had fallen out of the wall-to-wall bookshelves had to be crossed carefully first. Passing by the kitchen I could see the refrigerator door wide open with food spilled all over, dishes out of the cupboard smashed on the floor, photos and paintings hanging lopsided on the wall.
I finally made it to my son but he couldn’t stop crying so I told him he was really special. He couldn’t understand that. He stopped crying and looked up at me expectantly. I told him that he was special because he was only ten years old and had already experienced his first earthquake! I said “I never got to experience an earthquake until I was thirty nine!” “Really?” he said, eyes wide open and ready to hear more.
I have often thought of that experience and my reaction and the resilience it showed. I’ve wondered how I came up with that approach and thought back to my growing up years.
My father was a brilliant and talented man. Me being born on the day he was laid off from his job in the depression did not help him fight the devil within: alcoholism. He was very talented but was deterred from using that talent by his habit gleaned as a musician on the Cunard lines in his younger days, being thanked and compensated with many drinks by the wealthy passengers.
That weighed down my mother who took on the tough job of holding onto the family in as normal a situation she could in spite of the uprooting each of my dad’s failings would bring upon her and us children. She worked two jobs when she could, taking better ones in the city as we grew older. Looking back to those tough days, I remember my mother sitting in her chair with this deeply sad and worried face, worried, I am sure, with how to pay the rent or what she could do to make things better, where they should move to this time with very little money after another loss of my father’s job. She was the one who got no rewards for helping us all move forward and to not be pulled downward from our pasts. He got praises for things he developed, the name he made for himself around the world eventually and for all he had taught in his work, his writings still being published today. But it was the backbone of my mother all along that made it all happen with the support she gave him and the positivity she gave us all.
Perhaps that is where my own resilience came from. I picked up more on my mother’s calmness and ability to “take things on no matter what” than the negativity of my father’s weak character at the time. I know I can get through whatever because my mom sure did. I have needed this ability to cope through many tough and scary times like losing my husband when he was only 54, and having to work two jobs to cover the family’s expenses. Then taking a chance by opening my own real estate brokerage office only to have to close it and let my agents go due to mortgage interest rates rising to 21% and none of us could help our buyers afford a home. Then me being hit by cancer in 2003 and it coming back to haunt me 18 years later.
I know I have gained a lot from those past experiences: patience, calmness, positivity, recognition of another’s life experiences. And I know that all of them have helped me to handle the next, as surely there will be more earthquakes and other issues in the future. But you know what? I can handle them. Just like my mother did.
