That a sense of mastery over your own destiny is illusory at best: things will always happen that are outside your control. A strong shake by the biggest and fiercest of all Mothers is a salutary reminder.
That diving under the nearest table and holding on for dear life seems much less silly and much more ingrained than it used to.
That if you are separated from your loved ones, the first thing you want to do is find them. While knowing our daughter was safe with her carer, our first thought was to leave work and go and collect her.
That walking home uphill after a magnitude 6.6 earthquake while nearly 8 months’ pregnant is slow, tiring progress. Thanks goodness a kind soul offered us a lift home. Otherwise, I could still be walking back.
That people can be very generous: we were not the only ones being offered a lift up the hill, and car pools were organised to get stranded commuters home to various locations around the greater Wellington region.
That the will to normalise is very strong: minutes after the earthquake, while some people were still wild-eyed and shaking, others were making flippant remarks or getting on with plans to get home. After about 24 hours with - touch wood - much smaller aftershocks, my nerves seem to be adjusting much more quickly than they did during the big earthquakes last month.
That maybe there is something to this animal instinct business and pregnancy after all. I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I'm pretty sure my reactions to the earthquake are heightened by the sense of increased vulnerability I feel being pregnant. Weirdly, I have felt more in touch with my animal nature during these episodes than during birth and breastfeeding.
That having a very young child who slept through the quake and hasn’t really noticed most of the aftershocks is probably much easier to deal with than a fearful older child whose imagination is running riot and can’t sleep.
That having a sore bump and lots of foetal wriggling does not necessarily mean early labour, and, even if it did, 33 weeks is way more optimal than 28 weeks.
That outdated advice is still circulating, particularly around sheltering in doorways and the more dangerous ‘triangle of life.’ It’s much much less silly to dive under a table or desk and ‘drop, cover and hold.’
That social media and the internet generally are both a blessing and a curse in times like these: great for circulating messages and information quickly, while freeing up phone lines for emergency calls; not so good for sensationalising - reports of people ‘fleeing’ central Wellington seemed a bit over-the-top to me - and people feeling the need to to outdo each other in the pseudo-sophisticated flippant remarks stakes.
That there are a number of well-coordinated services and people out there who worked through the strong aftershocks - and continue to work - to try and keep people safe or help them out: emergency services, lines-people, engineers, bus and taxi-drivers, civil defence and emergency management staff, GNS scientists, local and central government officials, and, yes, politicians too. They no doubt have loved ones they wanted to get home to as well, but put their responsibilities to their job and their community first. That is really humbling and I am very grateful.
That this will be a short post: this week, I was halfway through a review of sociologist Sharon Hays’ 1996 book The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, but, strangely, didn’t feel like finishing it this weekend. Hopefully, strong aftershocks notwithstanding, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
