What Liz Said

1.8 Magnitude Rattles DC Area.

My mother lived in the Bay Area of California for years. I was actually born in Oakland, though I count myself as a DC native. My father moved the family back to Washington DC (where they were from, as well) before I was two years old. I don’t remember anything about California at all. My parents always thought I’d be bitter that I was born in Oakland instead of San Francisco. Au contraire. I’m bitter that I was born in California instead of in Washington DC where I grew up and where my family grew up. This has since become the punchline of many a family joke.

I digress.

One of my mother’s major complaints was that she never felt an earthquake. Girlfriends would call her at all hours, “Judy! Did you feel that?!”

“And I’ll tell you something, Elizabeth” she’d say to me. “I didn’t feel a damn thing. Not once. Not ever. We lived on a fault line, and nothing! How is that fair?”

Well, on Tuesday my mother finally got her wish. In a zippy twist of fate, DC experienced an itty bitty quake registering 1.8 on the Richter scale. Within minutes my mother was on the phone.

“Elizabeth! Did you feel that?!”

I had, but decided to give her the moment she had been waiting for. I told her I had not.

There was a brief silence on the line. I could almost hear the edges of her mouth forming a smile. With a hint of smugness, she told me that she had. She recounted her initial confusion and sudden realization as to what was occurring. She described every shake and rumble as if it where a Wagner opera, and not the geological equivalent of a kitten purring. Well, she had been waiting, so she deserved this moment… and I let her have it.

My mom finally got her earthquake.