The Sky is Falling

I have vertigo. Have I mentioned that?

It was actually a Monday morning following a Girls Weekend that I discovered I had it. Couldn't seem to stay upright. Fell down while drying my hair. Fell down while trying to sit on the toilet. Fell down shaving my legs. It was like my head gained 600 pounds. I just could not keep it off the ground.

And since at the time I was married to Lars, and he was away on an educational rotation in another state, I did what every grown up does. I called my mother.

My mother lived inconveniently an hour away at the time, so she called my Dad, who was living a mile away. He came into my house, threw a sheet over me like a lunatic and called the ambulance. And the games began.

And since then I've learned that I can no longer rollerblade, that I can't walk around in the dark, and that if I can't see the ground that I'm walking on (because maybe I've looked up at the clock on the tower on City Hall) I will not only walk crooked, I may actually not stay entirely erect. It's an ugly little affliction. But one I control by keeping my eyes open and my hand on the railing if I have to look at the person I'm descending the stairs with. No one needs to be accused of being drunk at work.

So imagine my confusion when I was standing in a colleague's office last week and felt the Earth move. I chalked it off to vertigo and thought I'd better refill that allergy prescription until she said, "Liza, is the building moving?" And then I noticed that it was not just my wacky little inner ear follies, it was actually environmental. Her shades were swaying. Because the building was moving.

And being a life-long East-Coaster, the last thing I thought it could be was an earthquake. Honestly, I work in such a low budget, slum-lord style, paint-and-carpet-are-only-lipstick-on-the-pig building in the nation's crime capital with the largest privately held collection of derelict buildings, I assumed that the building was about to collapse.

And nearly came unglued.

When all the inhabitants of the department came out into open office space with looks of confusion, my boss ushered us into the hallway. And from there we could see that the building was truly trembling. And it wasn't improving. It was getting worse. We could see that we were in and out of alignment with the parking garage. The attached parking garage.

Into the fire stairs we went. Me in my kitten heel flowered sandals and impossibly straight skirt, running down 5 flights of stairs, pit stains forming on the cool blouse Charlotte just gave me. I began to say Hail Mary's loud enough for the whole lot of us to hear. Surely Mary would hear.

Once outside I ran from the building hoping to dodge whatever debris would surely be falling by then, but not looking up because taking my eyes off the ground would make me fall down... damn vertigo.

I boldly stopped traffic to let all the building occupants cross the street. Feeling safe somehow next to a dilapidated brick house that probably would crash to the ground from the force of our building collapsing. A no win situation.

And once there, a colleague got a text from her husband. It was not that our building was finally just crumbing, but a 5.8 earthquake in Virginia that would be felt from Georgia to Canada. It was just getting rolling when it rumbled through my little corner of commercial office space.

I was at once relieved to learn that my building was not slum enough to actually be falling down(though I wanted a word with the fire department when they cleared the building to be entered occupied again.)

But what I realized next was my deepest fear that day. It was not that I feared being bonked on the head by a flying chunk of cinder block. Or that the world had gone mad. Or that we were the object of an attack of some kind.

It was that suddenly and all too soon, I would die. And that I was not prepared. I have living to do, and love to give, and things to accomplish and lessons I need to teach my children.

And the worst part of that was, if I were to die, my innocent children would be left to be raised solely by Lars. The nut. The ogre. The bully. The Very Bad Person. That they would feel so lost without me. That they would dispare. They would have No Way Out.

And when we were allowed back in our building and had climbed the stairs to resume our work and finish the day, I quietly closed my door and cried. Just a little. For reasons I still can't completely explain.