Earthquakes and old friends...

I was en route to my mom's place in the East Bay around 11a when a warning message flashed across my phone's screen: TSUNAMI WARNING! Stay away from the coast! Move inland! 

I knew that there had been a rather large earthquake this morning about 5 hours north of us, but what I didn't know was that there had also been a series of quakes out in the ocean on two different fault lines. Bart, our regional train system, suspended service as a precaution and all of us passengers had to off-board at the final SF station. I was not going to mom's today after all. Our SF-wide train service was also suspended, so I took a streetcar, then a bus, and then used my feet to get back to where I'd parked my car in an area of town called Glen Park. 

I live about 7 blocks from the beach, but our area was not given evacuation orders. I think, however, West Berkeley and parts of Pacifica had to 'close up shop' and get out of Dodge. As quickly as everything began, the tsunami warning was rescinded and transit services resumed. I probably could have gotten out to mom's had I just hung downtown and waited a bit. Oh, well. 

***

I had what I might call an 'emotional earthquake' last week at my new job selling fancy chocolates. It was Day 3 and a nice couple came in to purchase some goodies. They had a few questions and I did my best to assist them. The woman struck me as looking familiar. I have worked in the service and retail industries on and off for decades and have a fairly good head for faces. Occasionally, though, some people just look like other people. There are only so many combinations of facial features, 'colorings' and builds to go around. We probably all have a Doppelgänger out there somewhere, or at the very least someone who looks like they could be a sibling. I think that's what I was thinking when I was talking to the woman in the chocolate shop. She could have been someone I'd served eggs to some 20 years ago. Or mixed a cocktail for some 15 years ago. Maybe she'd been in a play I'd seen. Or maybe she was from my general neck of the woods and I'd walked by her at some point in life and taken note of her somehow. 

None of the above was actually the case. I know this because when we were chatting chocolate I felt compelled to tell her that she looked like a friend of mine. The woman responded with the usual sort of thing when a stranger blurts out something like this. It was: I must have one of those faces. 

I could have smiled and agreed and left it at that, but instead I said the first and last names of my friend. This was a friend, might I add, who had died in the early 90s in a car crash. She (I'll call her Chickie) and I ran in the same circles in high school. We were pretty tight back then. She was funny, fearless, charismatic and silly. We partied pretty hard together and did our fair share of cruising the El. She left behind young children. She also left behind parents and sisters.

She said: That's my sister. 

I looked into this woman's face and knew immediately who she was. She was no longer the small, chubby-cheeked girl with a sort of mullet-y haircut who always had the biggest gap-toothed grin on her face. I said her name--it came out like a squeaky question, really--and went in for a hug. She is now taller than I am and resembles my friend, her sister, so much these days that it was uncanny. I had not seen this person since the mid-to-late 80s. The whole thing was mad. We chatted for a bit about her and her family, her nieces and nephews and what she's doing now. It was hard to focus on the task at hand for a while after she and her husband left the store. 

During my lunch break, I called the only person in my phone who was also friends with Chickie. She didn't pick up, so I left the message: YOU'LL NEVER BELIEVE WHO I JUST SAW!

Photo credit: Bruce Kaiser