Stockpiling Fear
Unpacking lessons from my doomsayer mother
‘The San Andreas Fault is going to give, Lani. I’m keeping you and Dirk safe. If your other brothers don’t want to move now, I can’t make them.’
It was 1989. I was fifteen years old. My Mom had begun to believe the prediction of her psychic friend, Heather, that ‘major earth changes’ were imminent, and in order to have a hope of surviving, we must change our lives.
Step one was to save ourselves from falling into the Pacific Ocean, along with a sizeable chunk of British Columbia, Washington State and California. We needed to move to a place where the effects of the fault lines were not under our feet, and get further away from the water’s edge. The San Andreas Fault was threatening to open its jaws, triggering a domino effect up the coast, setting off a tidal wave that would clear all the land — everything — out. At least that was the prediction.
We had been living in a humble fishing village outside of Vancouver, BC where my three older brothers and I safely walked to elementary school on our own and took turns riding our bikes to the corner store every Friday night to buy candies. We never locked the front door. But my Mom’s beliefs of what might be rendered our town a dangerous place.
