After falling asleep after reading a passage about the finitude of life in the book Four Thousand Weeks, I was rudely awakened an hour later by a blaring siren from my phone, followed a few seconds later by a huge earthquake. The earthquake shook so violently hard that windows and sliding doors were thrown open, lamps on nightstands crashed to the floor, and I genuinely feared the second floor of our house might collapse. After a minute of this, I picked up Forrest from his crib fearing either the fan above him would fall or there could be a collapse and quickly brought him downstairs. Completely oblivious to the entire earth shaking violently around him, he smiled and was excited for the midnight adventure with dada. When I brought him downstairs, he asked me if we could cook. I assume he thought it was wake-up and breakfast time (it was actually around 11:30pm). During this whole time, Leanne was at work in the Urgent Care where after she treated multiple patients with injuries related to the earthquake (which of course has its own ICD-10 code, go figure!). After a few minutes, the shaking subsided. Besides some fallen objects, our house suffered no damage and no one got hurt. I gently put Forrest back to bed and stayed up the rest of the night.

Since the earthquake, we prepared for the “big one” which we were told had a 1% chance of happening within a week. Everyone on base had been on edge. Thankfully, the week passed, and a few more, with just smaller shakes.