I’ve felt the earth move under my feet and, with all due respect to singer-songwriter extraordinaire Carole King, it’s terrifying. Moreover, my life as I knew it — not the sky — came tumbling down, tumbling down.

On Jan. 17, 1994, at precisely 4:31 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, the earth’s crust surged violently upward. An earthquake registering a brutal 6.7 on the notorious Richter scale struck California’s San Fernando Valley, yet could be felt hundreds of miles away. The epicenter, an earthquake’s origination point and location of most damage, emerged only about eight devastating miles from our home — even closer to my parents’ front door. A reported 72 people died, another 12,000 injured (some friends), as a result of the highest instrumentally recorded, seismic activity in a North American urban area.

A virgin shaker I wasn’t. Having grown up in Southern California, earthquakes came with the palm tree-lined, West Coast package; however, throughout my 30 years in LaLa-land (comedian slang for “Los Angeles”), I couldn’t relate to locals who’d nonchalantly lift their stemmed glasses of mineral water and wheatgrass juice without spilling a drop or missing a beat, waiting out Mother Earth’s frequent and unnerving hiccups. Never EVER having tasted wheatgrass aside, earthquakes freaked me out.

Years before the record-breaking quake, my husband and I saw “The Phantom of the Opera” at LA’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The famous chandelier, which the Phantom eventually cuts loose upon unsuspecting audiences, was a replica of the Paris opera house’s luminous fixture. Weighing about 16, 000 pounds and measuring 40 feet wide, the chandelier hung impressively and precariously over patrons “lucky” enough to be seated up front and dead center (pun intended).

Shortly into act one, an earthquake hit. I can’t remember the magnitude, but both hubby and I couldn’t forget that massive chandelier trembling before its cue. Only a near-sighted fire marshall could’ve sanctioned aisles so unreasonably long, and it took priestly self-control to refrain from sprinting across the endless line of well-dressed and well-pressed laps. If it weren’t for the small ransom theater-goers shelled out for coveted tickets and, more notably, the on-stage professionals who paused just infinitesimally during those heart-thumping seconds, I’d have fled like the doomed videographers in The Blair Witch Project; my shriek, which rivaled any soprano onstage, couldn’t be stopped.

Though the “Phantom panic” account may be slightly enhanced with “theatrics” of my own, I assure you that even 15 years retrospectively, there’s nothing remotely humorous about that fateful winter day when a literal blast of monumental change blew my sheltered world apart.

The initial jolting lasted around 30 seconds (an eternity in sheer terror), and fear splintered throughout my body like a windshield yielding to a sudden blow. Desperate thoughts battled more rational ones, all of them careening across my brain until the rattling in my head matched the rattling of my surroundings. Despite the gravity of the situation, or because of it, “auto-parent” kicked in, and somehow my husband and I reached our oldest son’s room before the house stopped swaying. Fortunately, our 5-year-old daughter loved sleeping in her big bro’s bunk bed, so in one frantic sweep of the room, we found both grade-schoolers wide-eyed but unharmed. My sweet girl leapt into my arms and wrapped around my body, while my brave 8-year-old held onto her dangling leg and matched me stride for shaky stride. The three of us withstood the last of the initial rumbling under a doorjamb (antiquated earthquake etiquette) while my husband continued down the hall toward our 6-month-old son’s room.

Still only a minute into our morningmare, and not yet fully awake in any sense, I vaguely recall my husband shouting something about Logan’s door being stuck. My sister and her husband, visiting from Nashville and sleeping downstairs, had arrived upstairs in time to watch me trek shin-deep through personal debris and broken glass, which obstructed the pathway to our trapped baby. My husband feared “forcing the door open could” ... I didn’t wait to hear the end of that sentence.

In a reflexive, Supermom lunge at the door, all 115 pounds of me (1994) crashed into my youngest child’s room and lifted my remaining heartstring from his crib in one fell swoop. Not a scratch on him and unaware of the enveloping chaos, our sleepy boy squirmed in my fierce embrace; with my husband’s arms now around us both, we carefully navigated through smashed tokens of a young family, down the stairs and finally outside, where our bewildered family waited.

Mercifully, the walls and roof of our recently renovated home withheld, but little inside survived. Heavy oak furniture, TVs, VCRs toppled and crashed, miraculously missing all seven occupants. Shelves of dishes, glassware, crystal wedding gifts, along with the refrigerator and pantry contents landed in miserable, sticky, jagged heaps. The damage tally, including broken tiles and cracked walls and asphalt, neared $100,000, but the real valuables remain incalculable and irreplaceable; dated, ceramic handprints times three, family heirlooms, handmade Mother’s Day gifts and other one-of-a-kind treasures disintegrated into memories when the earth shifted. Yet, the most excruciating loss ultimately became the irreversible toll on my father. Around the time of the quake, and quite possibly as a consequence of it, Dad suffered several mini-strokes, though we didn’t fully comprehend the earthquake’s insidious impact on him until later. 

Most residents, including us, had no water, electric or gas for a week, so the entire brood (our family of five, my sister, brother-in-law and displaced parents whose house was uninhabitable) checked into a hotel a few towns away — and checked out 15 minutes later after a nasty aftershock shook our third floor room. (Thousands of aftershocks, many 4.0 to 5.0 magnitudes, ensued for weeks.)

Instead, we gratefully camped out at a friend’s less wobbly, one-story home, where the nine of us, at last, exhaled — then counted our many blessings, illuminated more than ever in the darkness. 
Since our friend lived in a community 20 minutes away, we found diapers, baby food and water — scarce commodities during the crisis. (Unexpected guilt over not breastfeeding longer slinked away with sightings of formula on the sparse supermarket shelves.) After two days of recouping and regrouping, we returned home.

That’s when I realized everything had changed. After all, if you can’t trust the terra (not so) firma underfoot, then the very premise of a “stable” life appears tenuous at best. Within two years, we sold our dream home and 20-year-old business with no substantial plans other than leaving. It’s a surreal revelation when your hometown no longer feels like home. Although we traded earthquakes for tornadoes (at least you get warnings … and a running start!), Nashville chose us as my only sibling lived here — and rounds of “eeny meeny miney mo” globe spinning had us relocating to Antarctica or Bangladesh.

Remarkably, a married lifetime squeezed into a moving van and headed from LaLa to Hee Haw (embarrassingly, the Nashville association Californians most reference), leaving our closest friends to question our sanity. I questioned it, too, as I grappled with what we’d leave behind: family and life-long friends, favorite restaurants and stores, sun, sand and surf, local “secrets,” year-round open-toed shoes and comfort in knowing every nook and cranny of familiar soil.

Nonetheless, once here, I embraced the tradeoffs: living near my sister after 14 years apart (Mom followed us with my ailing dad to Nashville, where his family cared for him together and eventually buried him close by), the spectacular change of seasons, the first snowfall, idyllic landscape, the freedom for kids to be kids, less crime and traffic, new friends and experiences. While I wasn’t paying attention, I’d cultivated a new life, a hand-picked hometown.

Astonishingly, buried beneath the rubble of unexpected, earth-shaking change, seeds of renewal silently (and unshakably) took root. Although I never again slept naked in California, I’ll forever keep running shoes and a flashlight nearby no matter where we live. And while I’ll always regret not investing in Pyrex, amid profound loss and after a cross-country leap of faith, I found new — and improved — stability … in more ways than one.