Earthquake Can’t Crack the Foundation of This New Marriage

Forgive the pun, but our marriage is off to a shaky start.

Two weeks to the day after we set up our first household as husband and wife, we were jolted awake by the bed shaking, not in the throes of marital bliss, but in the violence of a magnitude 6.6 earthquake.

What a way to wake up.

And what a way to start a marriage--especially since my wife is a Colorado native whose disdain for Los Angeles is second only to her contempt for skiing Texans. Even before the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake, she was convinced that Southern California was little more than a haven for crackheads and crackpots.

Now the cracks in our walls have her scared that the whole place--freeways and Disneyland and all--is sliding straight into the Pacific Ocean, a notion native Californians like me tend to laugh off as quaint. We might ultimately end up around San Francisco, but, hey, that’s still millions of years away.

If I sound glib, forgive me. But I am a California boy and earthquakes--terrifying as they are--are a fact of life in California, just like traffic jams and cellular phones. Love it or leave it. One of my favorite bumper sticker slogans is, “Welcome to California . . . now get out,” to which my wife promptly replies, “Gladly.”

Except it’s not that easy.

My family came to the Golden State before anyone knew there was gold in them thar hills. Our ancestors were the sorts who dueled with pistols on the dunes of San Francisco over personal affronts. They met their ends in violent and romantic ways, but never, so far as anyone can tell, in an earthquake.

Make no mistake, though: This shaker scared the bejabbers out of me and likely rattled the bones of my long-dead California forebears. My wife tells me that all I did during the initial jolt was hold onto her as I muttered “Oh, God” over and over and over.

I’m still not sure how she heard me over her screaming.

But in 30 of the most frightening seconds of our lives, most of what we owned was flung about as if in a blender--including us.

Wedding dishes we had unpacked just a few nights before were smashed to bits on the kitchen linoleum. The refrigerator dumped its contents and then promptly stopped working. Pictures tumbled in shards of glass or spun on the walls like something out of “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.” A seven-foot-tall wood armoire tipped over onto the coffee table, wrecking both. Carefully alphabetized books and compact discs lay in piles--”Return of the Native” mixed in with The Cranberries and Voice of the Beehive.

But the delicate crystal champagne glasses we used to toast each other at our wedding survived untouched and uncracked, almost as if to remind us that the vows we made to each other were stronger than the seismic forces that pummeled Southern California.

On the whole, our experience was not all that much different from thousands of others. The earth shook and all of us shook along with it. We held each other and shut our eyes in the deafening darkness.

Random possessions were destroyed: a dining table, a set of margarita glasses. Others survived: a crystal vase, a cookie jar, a wall clock. Death snatched the sleeping from their beds, but left neighbors unmolested.

It was a humbling reminder that we are transients whose bonds to life and to the earth are tenuous at best.

Easy come, easy go.

It is easy to look back now and understand how lucky we are. Our home is safe and dry, while others sleep on cots in gymnasiums. We wake up together every morning, while others mourn the empty side of the bed.

Even so, my wife still has trouble sleeping through the night. Every time the cat jumps on the bed, she sits up and braces for another shock. “Just when I’m beginning to feel comfortable here, this happens,” she said the other day, as we scrounged together enough cups and plates to eat breakfast. The quake has shaken her faith in the ground beneath us.

I could only shrug. Like most natives, I deny the danger, for better or worse.

It was scary.

But it is also over.

As we jogged through our neighborhood one evening, I harped on and on about the mechanics of earthquakes, hoping my A-minus college geology would help her understand what happened beneath our feet.

“I just don’t care,” she finally said in exasperation. “It doesn’t make me feel any better.”

Only time will.

And over time our lives will gradually return to normal.

For now, though, we both make a point of reminding ourselves how much we have left.

We call each other more often during the day, just to say hi.

We are thankful for quiet nights.

Even the cat gets more attention than usual--something I never thought possible.

Like the fragile crystal that survived the shaking, I hope our new marriage--delicate and unpredictable--will survive the tensions and fears that persist like constant, unsettling aftershocks.

As it toppled buildings, the quake also knocked away the inconsequential detritus that builds up in any relationship. There are cracks in the drywall, to be sure--fear, insecurity, powerlessness--but our structure appears to be sound, a green-tag romance in current terms.

We support each other.

Maybe our marriage is on pretty firm ground after all.