EARTHQUAKE / THE LONG ROAD BACK : Remembering a Vow--and a Birthday

Two things forced Jorge Gonzales Molina to suddenly get to know his neighbors: a 6.6 earthquake, and his wife’s fear of it.

He was a single guy in Mexico City in 1985 when an 8.1 earthquake there killed 25,000 people. He went to work at an auto repair shop after that quake, knowing he didn’t have to calm anyone down or help anyone out.

But now he’s a married guy in L.A., living in an apartment building where he knew no one.

So when last Monday’s quake hit, that all changed.

I saw them arguing on the sidewalk outside of their Echo Park apartment building in the first hours after the quake. He wanted to go to work but she didn’t want him to go.

“Please don’t leave me here alone,” wife Magdalena Maria pleaded. He replied that it was important to go to work, to earn some badly needed cash and to restore a sense of normalcy to the couple’s lives.

“But that won’t make any difference if we have no place to live,” she insisted. “Please stay with me.” He did.

*

I was struck by the conversation because a lot of Angelenos have been jolted into dealing with reality and each other. In scenes repeated from Northridge to Downtown, residents have been forced to get to know the person next door, often extending patience and courtesies that haven’t been seen around this town for some time.

The drought didn’t do that to us and neither did the floods, riots or fires.

But the 6.6er did, probably because it had a more widespread and disturbing effect on all of us.

I’m glad it did because we needed a wake-up call to take stock of ourselves and our place in L.A. I know I did. The normal routine of picking up shirts at the cleaners or visiting friends in Simi Valley isn’t a sure thing anymore.

I suspect my friends out in the Westside, inconvenienced by the broken Santa Monica Freeway, will see the ethnically mixed Mid-City L.A. neighborhoods much differently, now that they have to drive through them. It’s something that wouldn’t have crossed their minds in the past.

It hit very close to home for me when everyone in my apartment building got together to celebrate a neighbor’s birthday, an event that slipped by unnoticed last Monday in all of the chaos of the quake.

After we cleaned up and threw out the damaged belongings that couldn’t be salvaged, we got together to toast Monique on her special day. We laughed. We talked. We got to know each other. We felt good that we are neighbors.

I found out that my next-door neighbors are from St. Louis, Mo., a fact I didn’t know even though they’d been living in my building for more than a year. I then realized that Monique’s birthday party was the first social gathering in which all of the building’s tenants had attended in the 15 years I have lived there.

When I looked up Gonzales a few days later, he had made similar discoveries while helping his wife clean up the debris from the quake.

He spent the free time that Monday getting to know his neighbors in his four-story apartment building. He had been too preoccupied to say anything more than “hello” when he encountered them in the past, but now appreciated the problems and joys of the daily route that Magdalena Maria, who works part time as a baby-sitter, follows.

For example, he was horrified to learn how much time she has to spend to get to baby-sitting jobs near Downtown. He forgot that his wife doesn’t drive and must rely on the generosity of friends or public transportation.

He was helping to clean up the couple’s one-bedroom apartment when he discovered a smashed photo of the couple’s wedding day six years ago.

“Remember what you told me that day?” Magdalena Maria asked.

When he mumbled that he couldn’t remember everything he had said that day back home in the Mexican state of Mexico, she reminded him.

“You said our life together was more important than a job, or money,” she said.

Her words cut him like a knife. “I remember saying those things,” he admitted in a quiet moment. “How stupid of me to think making money was so important.”

The couple had thought about having a child but the husband dismissed the idea as too costly. A little one would bring unwanted changes to their lives, Gonzales had reasoned.

Now, he thinks it’s a good idea.

“It would be nice to know,” he said, “that my wife won’t be alone if she has a child. She’ll have me and the baby.”

*

As I write this, another aftershock is rumbling through the area.

I’m a little nervous about the shaking but I keep on typing. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.