Got distracted by an emergency plan
Sometimes I like to think: What would I do if something bad happened?
I don’t like to dwell on the particulars of what the something bad could be. I’ve been to the movies, read novels, seen the news. Lots of bad things could happen; lots of bad things are happening now. But what if something bad happened to me?
Right now, if the something bad was bad enough that we had to get out of here, my boyfriend Matt and I have a plan to meet at our friend’s cafe in Harlem, at 125th street, and walk out of the city together. Where we’ll be walking to is unclear, so for now, the plan ends at the cafe.
In California, the plan was to meet at home, but if the bridges were gone then we’d meet at the big thumbs up sculpture outside Facebook headquarters. Neither of us had been there but we picked it on a map, equidistant on foot from Oakland, where he worked, and San Francisco, where I worked.
Before that, shortly after we got together, when we were on opposite coasts, I sent Matt a late-night email: “In case of a collapse of society, let’s meet in Lexington, Kentucky, it’s in the middle.” He responded: “Great. See you on the steps of City Hall in Lexington, Kentucky if it all goes to shit. It’s a plan.”
These plans might have been a joke, or an indulgence, in Matt’s case, but they also might not have been. I think if there had been a massive earthquake and I’d gotten stuck in San Francisco without mobile service and the bridges were out, I’d probably have started walking to the thumbs up statue outside Facebook, maybe with a little shrug. Where else was I gonna go? (Matt says now that he might have, too, although he admitted the plan was a hidden a little deeper in his memory than it was in mine.)
This is the kind of emergency planning I like to do. Completely useless schemes for big, wild, catastrophic scenarios. The more mundane-type planning, you know, the kind that might actually be useful, I have a harder time with.
I grew up in coastal Virginia, a place that gets lots of hurricane watches but very few hurricane warnings and fewer hurricane hits, thanks mostly I think to North Carolina jutting out into the Atlantic. But there are often a few tense days in late summer when we would watch and wait to see what a hurricane would do, but then more often than not, the tension would clear up as we missed the worst of it.
My parents have been through it all many times, and are methodical in their preparations, if things are really looking dire. They fill up their cars with gas, make sure they have some cash and that the grill has propane, move outdoor furniture inside, make sure a pump is set up in the basement, track down our flashlights. But there has never been much last-minute panic, no frantic store runs. We’ve always had overflowing cupboards. I’d always assumed this was more a function of our family habit of shopping at Costco, but maybe there is something of the prepper in there, too, a desire to avoid the annual panic of asking: Will we have enough food on hand to weather a serious storm? Growing up, I always felt extremely safe, and also that if a hurricane did make a last-minute swing for us, that my parents would figure it out. They were my emergency plan.
Since moving out of their well-stocked home, my own disaster preparations have been more haphazard, marked by last-minute trips to the market for seltzer and chips and cheese and candy bars. Sometimes in my twenties I would think about how even a power outage of a few days would really be a problem — I rarely had more than a packet of spaghetti at home — but then not do anything about it. I couldn’t picture myself hauling a case of water up the stairs just in case, or even keeping a stash of protein bars. It seemed like overkill, the actions of someone who was truly paranoid, rather than someone who just had a cute little habit of thinking about what-if. Supplies I’ve considered buying, at one time or another: iodine tablets, first aid kits, respirator masks, bulk boxes of protein bars, cases of water, pre-made prepper kits, water filtering straws, a flashlight. Supplies I’ve bought: none. Sometimes I think, I should at least put some cash aside. And I have sometimes, stashed $20 somewhere, but it’s quickly gone to more quotidian emergencies: ice cream after a bad day.
I spent 2017 in San Francisco with Matt. We woke up to an earthquake just once. It was very small, but it was still quite terrible. The earth should not move. It feels wrong. It was over quickly, but I couldn’t go back to sleep. I didn’t know anything. You were either supposed to go outside, or you weren’t. You were either supposed to get under furniture or beside it. Door frames, bathrooms, I didn’t know the rules. Why hadn’t I learned the rules? I’d planned on where we should walk to meet halfway across the country, but hadn’t planned what to do when the earth shook.
I asked Matt, “What’s the plan for if there is another earthquake, a big one?” He said: “If the big one is gonna hit, it’s gonna hit. There’s no preparing for it.” Okay. “But,” he said, “the best prep would be to have shoes next to the bed so we could get them on and get out.” He said he’d googled it. The idea sounded sensible. So I put my shoes by the bed, and was able to go back to sleep.
Back in New York, I still keep my shoes by the bed. They’re basically in a pile, but I leave the most recent pair out. I usually take most of my clothes off to sleep, and as I do it, I almost always think, so I’m going to grab my shoes and then run down the street in my underwear? What a plan.
I’ve written before that I daydream of a dacha, a little escape upstate. But I think the real reason I want a dacha is because I want somewhere to go if something bad happens. I mean, I also want a weekend escape, but mostly I want somewhere to go if something bad happens. Matt is keen to buy an investment property somewhere, an apartment building in Vermont that would provide passive income. When we are chatting about this, I get dollar signs in my eyes at the passive income part, but then also say, “Well, we need to keep a little apartment in the building for us, you know, in case something bad happens.” Sensible. reasonable. “And you’d prefer it to be walking distance,” he says. “Well, yes,” I say. “If something bad actually did happen, we’d need shotguns to get there,” he says. “Right,” I say. “And someone else with shotguns would have already moved in,” he says. “So what you’re saying is that a dacha isn’t a realistic solution to something bad happening,” I say. “That’s what I’m saying, yes,” he says.
The thing is, if the emergency is significant enough, we won’t have to worry about it at all, because we’ll be dead, and there is some comfort in that. I think that’s why I don’t get very far with my plans; I realize that any situation dire enough to trigger them would be dire enough to render them absolutely moot.
So the plan is to not have a plan, to be open to the universe, to live in the moment, to enjoy life as it is today, when something good is happening. Something bad might happen; it usually does. But it’s beyond our capacity to plan for, or mine, at least.
Watercolor by Matt Davis
The Ginjan Cafe recently opened at 81 E 125th street in Harlem and is run by my friend Mohammed and his brother Rahim. They also ship their excellent African ginger drink all over the United States and you can find out more about it at https://drinkginjan.com/