I lived in Hawaii for five years. One morning, as I’m flipping pancakes to Erykah Badu, the ear-splitting sound of an amber alert makes me jump out of my skin. It was a ballistic missile warning that said we had twelve minutes before our little island imploded in a mushroom cloud.
I called my mother and sister, said my goodbyes, then walked to the ocean. The winds picked up, scattering the flowers. That is what I remember clearest of that day—the smell of plumerias. It’s strange, the details your mind magnifies in moments so large you cannot grasp hold of them.
If I was going to die, the sea seemed like the best place to slip into the Next Room. The ocean was empty, save for a sweet older woman I lived near. “Did you get the alert?” I asked. She nodded and held out her hand. “Float with me dear.”
I was born under water, so it felt like poetic justice. Anytime I’m enveloped by salt and silence, a deep sense of home washes over me. Those twelve minutes stretched into eternity. Forever existed within the shell of a second. I always thought my life would flash before my eyes, but it didn’t. There was only the water, and the woman’s steady hand, and the feeling of sunlight on skin.
Eventually, I turned to her and squinted. “I think it’s been longer than twelve minutes?” She laughed and said, “I would say so.”
I walked home and checked my phone. There was a message that may as well have read: JUST KIDDING, someone accidentally pressed a nuclear warning button. Carry on.
When I hear stories from that day, it is of streets flooded in panic. How do you translate the level of helplessness or total surrender we all felt? I talk of plumerias, pancakes and a kind withered hand that held what could have been the final beats of my heart.
The larger the story, the smaller the details we write.
Otherwise, it is just another pixilation of awful news to scroll through. We stop reaching for each other if there isn’t a bridge of empathy to step on.
If I were to describe the country of Switzerland, I would tell you how I could walk alone at night for the first time without fear. The swaying sycamore trees that grow in cloud forests, and the endless stars that blanket them. If I were to describe death, I would tell you about the way my best friend and I keep her mother alive in every inappropriately timed joke we tell.
I could tell you about life in some arbitrary poetic way, but we are unable to feel each other when we hear of the farthest reaching star or a foreign land that feels alien.
The path to understanding the universal is often walked in small footprints of the deeply personal. Writers are a magnifying glass for humanity.
xx,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Scribe
i absolutely loved this. love that i’m in now front of my fireplace in canada smelling ocean salt and plumerias and pancakes.
I work in disaster management in Australia where I’ve had to send emergency alerts. When we were trained, the facilitators used the Hawaii false emergency alert story to drill into us the importance of not f*cking that kind of thing up because of the panic and fear and everything in between that can cause unnecessarily. It’s incredible to read a post from someone who experienced that and how you felt in those moments receiving that message and I’m so sorry for everyone who was there how they must have felt too. Thank you for sharing x