Following Elias

Waiting for the Tsunami to Hit

I didn't even feel the 7.9 earthquake. Slept right through it.

(My Mom says when I was little, I slept right through the fire alarms in the dorm where we lived.)

Or maybe the quake shook me awake enough to hear my phone ring. "Who's calling me in the middle of the night? Nick?"

By the time I found my phone on the bookshelf, it buzzed again from a text from Nick: "Earthquakes feel bigger from twelve stories up."

Underneath Nick's message from Anchorage, where he's staying at the Caption Cook Hotel for work, I read two words from the alert that woke me: Tsunami Warning.

A warning is the highest level of alert, after a watch and advisory, it means a Tsunami is already occurring or imminent.

If it was light I'd be able to see the water of Resurrection bay, a stone's throw from The Paddle Inn, our friends' house where we currently stay. We live on Lowell Point, a spit of land outside Seward, with one road to and from that snakes between the cliffs of Bear Mountain and the waves of the ocean bay.

A two mile gravel road, recently damaged during the last Super Moon, that coincided with a storm surge during high tide. Waves crashed on Nick's truck as he drove past, waves tore at the barrier rocks, waves carved out whole sections turning it into a single lane in places.

This is our road to the grocery store, to the post office, library, school, friends, the road that leads out to Third Avenue and the Seward Highway, north to Anchorage, to the airport, to my only means of visiting my Mom and Dad, my brother, and childhood friends.

"Is the Tsunami warning real?" I texted Nick, still waking up, not ready to accept that a giant wave was already traveling up to 400 miles per hour my way.

Maybe the false missile alarm in Hawaii fueled my skepticism, maybe this post-truth, false news, bamboozlement sparked my distrust, maybe I was just still too tired to want to believe the words: Tsunami Warning.

I wanted it to be a bad joke so I could get back in bed instead of fleeing for our lives.

"Not sure. Just saw it." Nick responded.

Seconds later he called. This was no drill. No spam text message.

We had to go.

Now.

My friend Audrey called as Nick and I were hanging up to make sure I'd received the alert. The Tsunami was predicted to hit Seward around 1:45 am, within the hour.

My daughter lay under the covers of my bed. "Olive, Sweetie, you have to wake up." i gently shook her shoulders. "There was an earthquake and a big wave might be coming. We have to go up top."

Up top is what we call my Cuzuncle David's property, where the broken bones of our house stand empty, but where he will always open his doors and invite us home. He lives 250 feet above Sea Level and his property is above the evacuation zone for Lowell Point.

Olive rose without protest, without fear, she climbed out of bed and followed me upstairs to wake Elias, who also rose easily and followed my directions.

No whining from my seven-year old girl, no obsessive questions from my thirteen-year-old son who experiences autism. The fact that both my kids rallied helped me keep my shit together as I put on my pants and thought about what to bring.

My dogs were already watching my every move, born ready. I grabbed my computer bag from the couch that also holds my journal, picked up my wallet and checkbook from the counter, in the bedroom I grabbed our older laptop with its tens of thousands of images of mountains, water, and our family as we played upon the ridges and shores.

Thats it.

No jewelry. No gear. No clothes. No books (though later, sleepless, I regretted leaving my current book at home.)

As we put our coats and boots on over our pajamas, me helping Elias with his socks and shoes to speed our exit, I asked: "Is there anything either of you wants to grab before we go?"

Neither child budged from the entryway--no stuffies or toys or "special" pillows that always need to travel with us on every trip--Olive shook her head no and Elias didn't respond.

My two Border Collies nosed the door, as if to tell me: Go!

We crowded into my car and drove the half mile up, past the State Park parking lot, along the start of Tonsina Trail, as the Tsunami Sirens rang out and the recorded voice told all low lying residents to go to higher ground.

As I drove, my phone buzzed with texts from friends in town offering up their homes. My friend Kim called to make sure I heard the alarms.

Before I even parked, David stood at his front door waving, porch lights ablaze.

"I'm shaking," I said, as he gave me a much needed hug the moment we walked in the door. My adrenaline untapped and flooded my body now that I knew we were safe.

David didn't seem worried; he even apologized for not having fresh cookies to share. He gathered blankets and pillows as I told the kids: "A wave can't reach us up here."

David looked for more information on his computer as I got Elias settled on the futon and Olive set up in the guest room with me.

It felt surreal that a massive wall of water was approaching the beach below. I knew we were safe up top but what would happen when the tidal wave crashed on the houses at sea level? Would the Tsunami decimate our road?

I texted Nick: 'We are up here. Missing you!!!"

He replied: "This sucks. I want to hug you. Wish I was home. No word yet."

I checked Facebook, checked the news, replied to texts, texted Nick again, checked Facebook, checked the news, texted Nick...

Nothing quite like waiting for a Tsunami to hit. Safe but worried about the carnage the wave had the potential to wreak.

Someone reported that a 35 foot wave hit Kodiak.

Was it minutes or an hour later that I learned it wasn't true? Time seemed to stall as I waited for 1:45 to roll my way, and with it a wave that could change everything.

I briefly wondered if town might have been a better choice, to stay connected to the mainland if the Tsunami destroys our road. But I felt good about my decision to drive up top, to my resourceful Cousin's abode, off the grid, with solar panels, a powerful generator, water filtered from a bog, an endless supply of firewood, a stand up freezer full of salmon and a second freezer stocked with cuts of our friend Jen's pig.

And besides this is home. Why would I leave?

David's practical calm acted as the perfect buffer to my imaginative frenzy. His reassurance allowed both my children to easily fall back asleep. If it had only been my emotional energy around them, they might have stayed wired with me, eventually cracking open in all kinds of undesirable ways.

Instead they slept peacefully as I worried. Worried wondered, and waited.

I missed Nick in so many ways and for so many reasons. He is the one who instinctively responds with grace in emergencies as I flutter or freeze. And I wanted his familiar arms around me, his blue eyes to look into mine, reminding me that we can face any challenge if we do it together.

At 1:45 I tried to listen for the sound of a wave crashing ashore.

Nothing.

No reports from Kodiak with an earlier arrival time anticipated.  No more alerts or reports.  All the government websites began with a message about the government shutdown and then went on to say that due to the importance of the information shared this site would not be affected. I wondered. I worried.

I waited.

Most of my info I gleamed from Facebook. Downtown Seward had been evacuated with folks sheltered at the high school, hanging at the Pit Bar on the road out of town, or huddled in friend's homes a hundred feet above sea level.

I learned that our local radio hosts Mike and Wolf were not only providing useful information but entertaining the folks who waited the wave out in their cars. I read countless posts saying: If anyone needs higher ground my door is open; my home is yours if you need it; anyone welcome.

And as I waited for the Tsunami to hit, I fell in love with my new community all over again.

As the East coast rose, and messages poured in from friends and family back home, I fell in love with humanity again.

This is who we are. Not democrats or republicans, not conservatives or liberals, not the clothes we wear or the items we own, but human beings who need each other, who help each other when an earthquake wakes us up in the middle of the night.

When the ground cracks, when the wind rips, when the trees blaze, when the water engulfs, we are all strands of the same rope that pulls us ashore.

The feared Tsunami never came.

Not this time.

Not yet.

"That was all just for practice?" Olive asked the next day.

"Yeah, yeah it was," I said. "They thought a real wave was coming and so they warned us so we could be safe. But it ended up being a real live chance to practice."

School began two hours late that morning and everyone I passed, in the hallways and parking lots as I walked both kids in late for their late start, in Rez Art coffee shop where I treated myself to a latte, everyone seemed to share a tired knowing smile, like we were all in this shit together.

We all spent a few crazy midnight hours expecting a tidal wave of doom, only to wake to skies that sparkled a little brighter than the day before. 

 (The beach houses of Lowell Point the afternoon after evacuating.)

Sunrise Run

I've been to Tonsina Creek countless times but, till today, never for the sunrise.

I planned to walk the trail but looked up from my book in time to see the sky lighten, clouds a slight hue of rose, and jumped off the couch to find my running shoes.

I made it to the beach just in time:

I'll be back to catch the sun again-- and hopefully next time my phone won't die. At least I captured a few images first.

But honestly, standing and staring, with my phone in my pocket, wasn't so bad.

Not bad at all.

Happy Friday all!

National Do Nothing Day

From my journal yesterday:

There is a quiet that comes with birthdays as we age. Less outward celebration and more of an inner dialogue that catalogues years lived alongside the dreams for years left. A grounding of acceptance and longing mixed with memory. Less balloons and more solitude. 

A walk on the beach this morning during the break in the rain, just me and my Border Collies, raven and magpie, driftwood and mussels shells. I watched saltwater snake its way up the dry creak bed as the tide rose, watched the clouds regroup and overtake the small patch of blue, watched a sea lion who poked his head above water to watch me.

Before my walk, I spent two hours reading "To The Bright Edge of the World", by Eowyn Ivey, so immersed in her story, as I wondered the woods of Tonsina Creek, in this snowless above freezing winter, I thought it was April, as it was in the book, and not January. 

Even on my birthday, I forgot for a moment the season, the specific day.

Neither child remembered my birthday this morning, though they both remembered that according to Olive’s daily calendar January 16th is National Nothing Day.

“Its National Nothing Day,” Olive said, as she came downstairs, not a word about my birthday till Nick whispered in her ear.

Elias clomped downstairs soon after and said, “Today is National Nothing Day!” 

Again Nick reminded him that it also happened to be his Mom’s birthday.

On the days leading up to the day of my birth, Olive enjoyed chiding me about my holiday of nothing. “Mom’s birthday is on National Nothing day!” she would say with a cocky grin.

“You like rubbing that in,” I’d reply.

What neither kid realized, is the moment Nick ushered them out the door for school on my birthday, I planned to climb back in bed with my coffee and Ivey’s imaginative tale, thrilled to do "nothing” after a long weekend that included a women’s hockey tournament in Homer, four games in three days, with a costume dance party, and to cap the weekend, a fat bike ride on Monday afternoon with Nick along Exit Glacier River bed.

Yes, I can commit to nothing. No guilt about reading in bed, no expectations as I turn forty-five years young. If the rain hadn't stopped and that small blue hole grown across the sky, I might have stayed in bed all day.

After my beach walk, I met Nick in town for lunch at the Cookery and then returned to the pages of my book, as the rain returned to Lowell Point. 

And now I write. 

The kids just came home and Olive asked, “What did you do for your birthday Mom?”

“Nothing. Remember, its National Do Nothing Day.”

“Really? You did nothing all day?”

“Yep.”

“But you're writing right now. That’s not nothing.”

This makes me smile. "You're always doing something, Mom!"

“You're right. I read and walked and wrote and had lunch with your Dad today.”

Not nothing at all.

A perfect birthday. 

Topped off with dinner at Woody’s with my family, including Cuzuncle David, a hot tub with the kids as Nick made chocolate moose from scratch, served to me with candles for a wish.

And then back to bed where the day began, with a good book to read, and the man I love beside me. 

Can’t ask for more.

From the Fog to the Forest and What Lays Beyond

I see it happening.

The shoulders widening, muscles multiplying, hands now larger than mine, the small hairs that parallel his upper lip, like a trail along a creek that leads to the sea.

The hairs he shakes his head at in rapid defiant bursts side to side, whenever someone says, "Elias, you're getting a mustache!"

No I'm not! he seems to say.

I'm not changing, not growing, not rearranging within this awkward body of mine, awash with hormones that make me say 'I don't know' to an array of questions, that make me hungry night and day.

I plan to stay the same, to wear my same old clothes despite the new ones for Christmas, stick to my too-small jacket with brushfire burn-holes that leave a trail of small white feathers in my wake, despite the new coat hanging on a hook by the stairs.

Make no mistake, I shake my head at adolescent change.

Sure, I'll march down that number line, so sequential and ordered, excited to turn fourteen because it comes after thirteen which follows twelve, the number after eleven, but I have not agreed to the rest of the changes that come with age.

I don't understand this transitory stage between childhood and adulthood and so I will call your name--Mom, Mom, Mom--one thousand three hundred and thirty times a day...

Mom, can you get me water? ("Pour yourself a drink.")

Mom, what's for dinner? ("You'll see...")

Mom, can you help me get the shampoo out? ("You can do it, Bud, keep trying. You gotta get your head under the water first, now look up, run your hands through your hair...")

Mom, are we going swimming today? ("Yep, you just said that.")

Mom, can you help me fix my sock? ("You try first.")

Mom, Mom, Mom....("You're interrupting, hold on.")

Hold on.

Maybe we are both trying to hold onto to the remaining days of childhood, as if we could stop time instead of forging into the unknown forest of adolescence and adulthood, where nothing is as certain as the sound of my name.

Mom: the meaning remains the same both forward and backwards, three simple letters, rounded and curved, as familiar as a womb, as the returning full moon, as the mountains standing guard, more worn, less hard.

Mom, Mom, Mom...

Or maybe not. 

Maybe Elias does want to mature and explore beyond my five foot two reach.

Maybe what he's feeling is that anticipatory terror mixed with longing, glee even, to purge ahead; the way I feel when I stare too long at a blank page.

The unknown paralyzes me, even as I feel called to fill the void with words.

I don't yet know the story ahead, what I will discover within the garden of language, what unexpected fruits will ripen as I write one phrase after another, until the page transforms from a white fog to lines with meaning--so before I begin, I often feel stalled in this in-between place, on the edge of inertia and the unraveling of whats within the synapses of my mind.

I am not in my son's head, despite endless sentences seeking a keyhole, a secret back door where only those that truly love him dare enter, a porthole to understanding the complexity within his injured resilient and always maturing mind.

All I can do is follow his lead, I've said it before and I'll say it again-- All I can do is follow Elias.

Follow Elias's uncertain but deftly navigated trail into the abyss of what lays beyond the horizon. Beyond childhood, beyond what I can currently imagine from these brackish waters where the creek gradually becomes the sea.