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.

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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 in my mind and placed them elsewhere – on vacation out of town where the waters couldn’t reach, or in tall buildings unaffected by the rising waters, my children always 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.

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A tsunami, a formidable force layered with the choices I have made over the time it took for it to brew to its full potential. A wall of unstoppable change that would take no prisoners, a current that set free every promise I had made and every promise that had ever been made to me.

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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. 

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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.

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Bracing myself, I took her advice. Always turn towards the pain, she had told me, face it, emrbace it. and so I did, stepping into the belly of the beast, I trace its insides with hopeful hands, remembering what I had always known: Important change always comes in tsunamis.

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