The first time I saw the wave rise above, I underestimated it. It won’t touch us, I thought. We’re too far, too high, too fast. Then I saw it pick up the SUV driving on the road in front of us and sweep it up and out into a horizon I could no longer see. The water’s movements were effortless yet erratic, like a toy car caught in the tantrum of an impatient toddler.

As is usually the case for scenes rooted in survival, I quickly became occupied with the need to save the people I love. Taking hold of a moment of lucidity, I picked them up individually with my mind and placed them elsewhere – on vacation out of town where the waters couldn’t reach, or in high rise buildings unaffected by the rising waters, my children tucked safely in the crook of their arms. Practical and simple, but I soon realized, a futile exercise. They would remain untouched even in this dimension because this wave was mine and mine alone.

A tsunami with frothy limbs and restless eyes, layered with the choices I have made over the time it had taken for it to brew to its full potential. A wall of unstoppable change that would take no prisoners / the current that set free every promise I had made and every one that had been made to me. Over and over again, the tsunami rolled forward with decisive change and then pulled back, uprooting trees and intentions, reconstructing everything once familiar. The salty water swept my memories and tore its way through a heart which had always anticipated its arrival. I just stood there, grudgingly admiring all that it devastated. 

At first I sought refuge in a house which somehow seemed to stand above the wreckage, where stray dogs and cats washed up scared and shivering, pulling themselves first into the rooms and then, as the tide rose higher with each returning wave, onto the roof. The rest of us simply followed, trusting in the animal instinct to survive. I remember finding a life jacket, ironically putting it on. and when that final wave started its slow, elegant march towards our now wrecked sanctuary, I knew it was time.

Embracing myself, I took her advice. Always look towards the pain, she had said, face it. So I did. Stepping into the belly of the beast, I trace its insides with my fingertips, remembering what I had always known.

Important change always comes in tsunamis.