8-29-11

“Are You a Hoarder or Something,…”

He said to me as I stood next to the neat but large pile of used toner cartridges.  He’d asked me two weeks ago to get rid of them, and two weeks later, here we stood.

“Well, no, but…” I stammered.   I didn’t have a good answer for why they were still there.  If I said it was because I can’t do ALL the work ALL the time, I’d sound like a whiney, petty bitch.

 He was teasing me, yet he was serious.  “I mean why are you collecting these here? Are you saving these to build a house out of or what?  I mean, really, are you a hoarder?”

I wanted to burst out laughing, but I did not, realizing he’d never in any remote way understand the reason for it.  How could he know about all the possessions I’ve had and all I’ve lost, either by having them taken from me or by walking away from them or having to sell them to survive?  How could my boss be expected to know about Mom’s glass pumpkin jar that held our Halloween candy or the pretty, pink raw silk couch that Scott and I hauled on foot across the six lanes of Baseline Road because I’d gotten it for $80 at the Goodwill store?  How on Earth would this man know I often look for things, only to realize they must have been left behind along the way?  Nothing about me would tell him that for a year and a half, every single thing I had was held in a 5’ x 10’ storage space.

“I know, you’re right.  I know you asked me nicely to get ‘em out of here,” I said, composing my brain lest too many pieces of my private life seep through.  “And I really will get ‘em out of here today.”    So I set upon the task of getting the toner stacked up and ready to go.  Afterward, I sat down at my desk and thought of the things I’d kept.  I kept Mom’s wedding dress for so many years, and I still have the green sweater she wore all the time.  I kept most every picture my mother took with her Kodak Instamatic cameras, and I kept some of the little doll babies she gave me every year for Christmas, even when I was grown.  I kept my record albums.  And, of course, I kept Mom’s wedding rings.

I am the antithesis of one who hoards.  I keep very little now, fearing that somehow I’ll have to leave it all behind again.  I subscribe to the “only have what you can carry” belief, knowing that in all probability, I’ll eventually have to move on down the road once more.  I’ve seen “stuff” come and I’ve seen it go.  The only things I hoard are my memories.  They pack well and fit in the tiniest of spaces.

THE EARTHQUAKE, BILL AND ME

       He casually picked up his Mont Blanc and reached for the ubiquitous yellow pad on his desk.

            “So,” he said with utter calm as he doodled, “what do you think?  6.2, 6.4?”

             The other people in his office with us had fled the room in terror the minute the floor jolted.  He and I were sitting there alone.  People were running around in panic.  Roughly five seconds in, the floor was rolling like a funhouse, and the interior blinds were deflecting out about three feet and slamming back into the windows.  I could hear women shriek and things fall from the overhead compartments in our cubicles.

             I was about to stand to leave, to find a way to get home.  My mother had gotten off work earlier, and I knew she was home alone.  He must have read my thoughts because he turned his green eyes on me and went into military mode.

            “Stay where you are!”  He commanded.  I trusted him, so I stayed.  He locked eyes with mine and did not flinch as larger objects outside his office began to crash to the ground. 

            “Are you afraid?”

             “No,” I lied.  This was my first earthquake.  I’d felt an occasional jolt here and there, but never in the seven years I’d lived in California had I been in a full-on quake.  The entire building was swaying.  Reading my mind, he said, “It’s supposed to move like this.  Stay in the chair.”

            All I could think about was my mother at home alone with the dog.  How long did he really think he was going to be able to keep me there?  Ten seconds of shaking and still no slowing.  Even I knew this was a bad one.

            Yet I sat there as calmly as he did, legs crossed, with him boring holes through me with intense eyes, probably waiting to see how long it would take me to panic and lose my sense of reason.  We stared at each other in this way, and the floor continued to undulate.  I could hear structural cracking above the sound of the blinds, still slapping into the windows.  My eyes never left his as I said,

            “My mother is alone in Rohnert Park.”

            He put his hand up to stop me and cocked his head.  He seemed to be listening for something.  What in the world was it…the voice of God…what? 

            “Go now!” he barked.  “Take off your shoes and go down the back stairs.  It’ll stop before you get to the first floor.  Try not to drive like a maniac, and call me on the car phone when you get to Rohnert Park.”

            I bolted from his office, ran past my desk to grab my purse, and flew through the door to the “executive” stairs.  I took my shoes off as he’d instructed, only now realizing he told me to do so to keep me from falling as the stairs pitched.  I was six steps from the ground floor when the Earth stopped moving just as he said it would.

            Driving home, I turned on the radio and heard about the fires in The City.  I heard part of the upper deck of the Bay Bridge had pancaked onto the lower deck and cars were driving off into oblivion.  I heard that homes on the Marina had imploded.  With tears in my eyes, I feared for the city I loved.  I reached home to find Mom safe and no damage at my apartment.   Later it would be known as the Loma Prieta Quake, or the World Series Earthquake of 1989, but I always think of it as the day of the earthquake, Bill and me.