How did I spend the day after the Big Audit? I slept until noon, then napped most of the afternoon away. I know that won’t get me back on a good sleep schedule, and it definitely won’t get me caught up on the work I’ve neglected, but it felt so good.

Well, it felt good until I got up out of the recliner and my legs felt like jello. I guess the other thing I need to get back up to speed on, besides sleep and work, is exercise. I’ve let the treadmill gather dust while I’ve been preparing for the audit and trying to stay up to date on the rest of my job, but I can’t keep doing that, or as old as I feel today will be how I feel all the time.

The audit? Oh, that went the way it always does. I stressed over it for two weeks, building to a crescendo in the last few days. Then it was over in two hours. I’ll get a report in a couple of weeks, and we’ll either have to pay a few dollars or we’ll get a refund of a few dollars. And that’ll be that until this time next year when I go through it all again.

After twenty years, the memories are starting to fade into something like a movie I saw long ago, even though I lived it. Each year, some of the details are lost, and the whole story takes on the structure of a legend, with high points that must be recounted, and a few fuzzy low points that could be dropped from the retelling entirely, because if I don’t I’m likely to replace them with newly misremembered information that didn’t actually happen. Such is the stuff of memory, and legend, and history.

Twenty years ago I lived through one of those moments when you say to yourself, “For the rest of my life, I will never forget a single thing that happened on this day.” And then, gradually over time (and twenty years is a fairly long time), you start to wonder exactly what happened that day. You know it was momentous, but maybe, somewhere in the recesses of thought and memory, you mislay the sequence of events, or the intensity of the experience.

It could be easy to refresh the part that everyone knows about what happened that day, because it’s the twentieth anniversary and it’s all over the news, in print and on television. It’s so pervasive that even people who weren’t there probably think they remember it, probably better than I do. There could well be people who weren’t born yet (in which case they would most likely be children or teenagers) who know more about the event, the sequence, and certainly the long range impact, than my memory dredges up unprompted.

What I remember most vividly, if this isn’t a contradiction, is the darkness. I remember the cars inching through crowded San Francisco streets with no traffic lights. It should have been chaos, and yet it wasn’t quite that. People got where they needed to go, eventually. At some intersections civilians got out of their vehicles and directed traffic, so that others could get home. In the end, it didn’t take as long to get from Candlestick Park to the Golden Gate Bridge as it might have. It took forever, but it was over before I knew it.

As I drove through the city, I listened to the one radio station still operating, getting spotty details about bridges and freeways that crumbled, and buildings that fell, and fires that raged. But the bridges and freeways weren’t totally destroyed, as we thought at first. The buildings were mostly still standing, although people on the streets below could never be sure for how long they’d hold up. And the fires were bad enough, but not bad enough to burn down the city. Sadly, people died, but not thousands. Still, it was some time before I could admit to myself that it could have been worse.

I made it home that night, and ten days later I was back at Candlestick, where I’d been sitting two rows from the top of the stadium when the shaking began. I don’t remember the game, except that my team lost. I remember the euphoria that the game could be played, and the sadness for all that had been lost. There was uncertainty about how we would come out of what had happened, but no doubt that we would. The scars are still there, but they’ve healed. They now seem part of the fabric of life, with a kind of inevitability to them. Maybe that’s why the memories are growing dimmer. Or maybe it’s the twenty years that have passed.

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I did write in my paper journal on that day twenty years ago and transcribed it nine years ago as a journal entry entitled Not the Big One. I could have looked there to remind myself of what I experienced and how I felt that day, but I wanted first to record how I remember it, twenty years on. That’s what’s represented in this entry.

This being the last day of summer (at least on my Tracks of Nascar calendar, Richmond being featured for September), I thought it might be appropriate to make an appearance here before the bleak midwinter comes creeping onto the scene. Actually, I’m convinced our best days are ahead of us (because what else could explain the days we’re leaving behind?). One thing is certain here in the North Bay. Our hottest days are right now.

Actually, I don’t know how I could be an more of a recluse during the winter than I have been all summer. My usual sunny mood has seen some darker than normal days, for no particular reason other than the shifting rhythms of life in general. I’ve sort of given up trying to alter my own outlook. It’s all I can do to take note of it and live in the moment knowing (or hoping, or at least suspecting) it will pass.

Summer will end tomorrow no matter how much we resist, but unlike past years, I’m going to embrace the cooler weather. I didn’t even mind the rain that fell a couple of weekends ago (although “fell” might be too strong a term; this rain seemed to stumble more than fall). What I don’t look forward to are shorter days with more darkness before, during and after. If there’s anything that puts the brakes on my good mood (such as it is) it’s the endless night of a dreary November, December, January, and on and on.