Fixin' Supper

It’s 8:50 p.m. and it’s 99 degrees. Enough already.

Wondering who to thank for that short shower we got a little while ago? The first appreciable rain I’ve seen in days.

That was all me. I went to Target during lunch and bought two soaker hoses* for the garden.

*Which I will of course still need to install asap, as the minuscule amount of rain that fell certainly won’t make that much different to my growing plants.

So when I go to weather.com and see a picture like this, I get a little freaked out. Right now, that big red area isn’t anywhere near my house. [Sorry for all you folks in my hometown. I hope you know the nearest neighbor with a basement. You all are in the red zone!! I guess you are just in for it, Mom and Dad. I doubt there are many basements near you. :( ]

It’s just tornadoes that do it to me. I have lived my whole life in tornado country but not til the big one in ’98 did they ever bother me. I mean, twice when I was growing up, tornadoes came down my street, skipping over the houses. In neither instance did any of my neighbors [or us] suffer severe property damage. I remember storms that knocked down massive trees — on my street and all around me. I remember one storm that just laid waste to the countryside out past my grandmother’s house. Farmhouses, trailers, trees — miles and miles of destruction starting what must not have been more than 2-3 miles from my house. Yet I grew up without a basement and never thought a thing about it.

Ah, the ignorance of the young.

Just like my 11-year-old dog, who also lived through ’98 [albeit outside in the middle of the storm -- far different scenario than my personal story], thunderstorms and tornadoes bother me more with each passing year.

After saying I wouldn’t even consider a house without a basement on this last move, I went and bought a house without a basement. It has many other charming aspects which overall, more than make up for the lack of underground shelter. But I know that at least three or four days a year, as long as I live here, I will be convinced that I was insane to purchase this place. So I am always grateful for storms that come during the day. I feel more in control of that. I hate nothing worse than waking up to the sound of the weather radio at 2:38 a.m., wondering where I am and why I’m up. Once I figure it out, I can’t go back to sleep until I see the storm is over.

All in all I suppose fear of tornadoes is both a rather minor phobia and also a rather healthy one. You won’t catch me out videoing any upcoming storms. On the other hand, I love a good thunderstorm. Never mind the light show and the accompanying chorus: I like the reminder that this physical earth is more powerful than we can imagine, and that its systems have a lifespan of their own, outside of humankind’s control.

It’s just, are those tornadoes really necessary? Thanks, I thought not either.

Yesterday Nashville’s suburbs were ripped by a number of tornadoes. I spent most of the afternoon glued to my TV and weather radio….the whole situation was a bad reminder of April 16, 1998, when my neighborhood was devastated by a large tornado.

This time around it was much more emotionally complicated of course — with a 1st grader scheduled to get out of school about the time the storms were coming in, you’re faced with one of those awful choices you have to make as a parent: Should I rush over to pick her up? Well how stupid would that be, considering that they’ll lock down the school for the tornado safety plan, and I’ll be out on the street in a car and she’ll be safe in the school basement?

And is she safer at my house than her after-care? Well actually, probably not. There’s a basement there and we don’t have one at home.

And wouldn’t it freak her out if I rushed in to pick her up? Probably. You have to explain stuff to 6yos. They don’t just accept everything at face value anymore.

So in fact, the only thing that would be improved by my picking her up would be my emotional state, briefly. Hmmm.

In the end, after several phone conversations, her dad and I decided she was just fine at school and that’s where she stayed. Here’s the best part. Was she scared? Heck no. She was mad that in the emergency preparations, she’d had to leave her backpack and lunchbox in the classroom, and that by Monday, the plastic bags in her lunchbox will be disgusting. She’ll have to throw them away instead of reusing them — as in, reduce, reuse, recycle. She’s all ready for Earth Day.

Talked with several friends from the ‘hood today while our girls all had their dance lesson — everyone had been through a similar experience to mine yesterday afternoon. We were all reminded far too much of the ’98 tornado, and shaken by how close (11 miles) some of the damage was yesterday.

More dramatic damage was only slightly farther to the north, in Gallatin, TN, home of my coworker Bill Hudgins and his wife Wilda Dodson. They are fine but have many friends affected.

While we could have a tornado at almost any time of year in Nashville (several years ago both Clarksville and Jackson, TN, were hit by enormous twisters in January, of all times), the spring always seems the most volatile, with lots of temperature fluctuations and rapidly changing weather. Here’s to summer.