The Ferocity of Wind and Rain

In memory of all those whose lives were taken

by tornados.

Prayers for those who have survived 

and wondered why they had been so lucky.

Fifty years ago today, the community in which I now live, suffered several F4 tornados. Left behind was a terrible path of death and destruction. Twenty-five percent of the community was leveled.

We were living on the East Coast at the time and knew nothing of this awful day. Folks living on either coast sometimes refer to the Midwest as a flyover zone. However, these destructive tornados apparently had not heard this was flyover territory. The community was changed forever. People rebuilt their homes and their businesses - and rebuilt their lives. But the memories are etched in their minds.

Five years ago, we had our own tornado experience. We were returning home after some vacation time south of us. “In the eye of the storm” usually means an eerie stillness at the center of turbulance. Not this time! We were at the epicenter of fierce weather sweeping across southeastern Minnesota. It was anything but still.

Our first indication of bad weather came as we traveled north on the freeway through northern Iowa in late afternoon. Clouds began to darken the sky west of us.  Two trucks passed us, somewhere in size between a small semi and a large 4-wheel drive pickup. Behind their cabs were satellite dishes - labeled Atmospheric Research. Our eyes widened. The trucks were followed by an SUV labeled Storm Watchers. 

Wow! This is just like a NOVA program on PBS. And we were in the middle of it! When the trucks left the freeway to veer northeast, we let out a deep breath and relaxed. Whatever was going on would not pose a threat to us – or so we thought. We were tired and ready to be home. We had no desire to be in the middle of some storm system.

We continued homeward, eager to unload our van and settle in. But the ominous clouds to the west darkened into a thick bank. Little fingers dipped down from it, as if checking out the ground below. The growing black monster in the sky slowly swallowed up these hooked fingers - a dance like a choreographed ballet. As we crossed the border into Minnesota, torrential rain began. Hail pelted the countryside, sounding like rocks hitting our vehicle.

We sought refuge under a bridge with other cars and trucks - wondering how much damage our poor van was sustaining. The rain abruptly stopped. Then the radio began reporting tornado funnels and touchdowns. We apprehensively eased back onto the freeway.

The tentative fingers reaching down from the black monster now were more assertive. Definitely there were tornados forming west of us. I dug through the glove compartment for a detailed map of familiar home territory - while the radio broadcast a continuous stream of weather information. 

Touchdowns were reported near Albert Lea and moving northeast. Torrential rain began again, this time harder. Visibility was almost zero. We pulled over with other cars and trucks onto the shoulder.  More touchdowns were reported near the small towns of Geneva, Hope, and Bixby.

Our hope was that the weather system would continue moving northeast ahead of us and across the freeway. Emergency vehicles periodically appeared - red and blue lights were spots in the growing darkness. Ambulances, state troopers, fire trucks . . . 

The intensity of the rain grew, along with the wind. Out my window I looked down at grasses bent flat to the ground in the wind. The radio warned vehicles and people to stay out from under bridges. Go to your basements – but our basement was far ahead of us on the freeway. Be alert for flash floods.

Get out of your vehicles and into ditches. We looked at each other. If we got into a ditch, we likely would drown – because the ditches were filled with water to their brims.

Neither of us voiced our fears out-loud that we might die in this storm. The only thing we could do was continue inching down the freeway with others caught in this frightening weather. I watched the map closely as we listened to radio reports of touchdowns. Unwittingly, we had become amateur storm chasers!

When we saw the sunset trying to break through the darkness, it was like the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. And we were alive - not dead! We began to relax tense muscles and increased our speed. It had taken us over two and a half hours to travel less than sixty miles.

We were among the lucky ones this time. Home never looked so good - with moonlight streaming through the windows!

It Is Never All Right . . .

When I graduated from college, I married, and moved far away from where I was raised. It was then that my life became my own. My husband and I furnished our first apartment with a Magnavox hi-fi and built a bookcase from bricks scavenged from the city. The bricks supported long planks to hold our growing collection of nonfiction, social activism, theology/philosophy, and poetry.

We wrote to our parents and described with excitement our new home. Our parents wrote back that we should lead a more conventional lifestyle. However, we had no intention of doing so!

We discovered more freedom by being able to travel to new places. From our home on the East Coast, we explored from Maine to Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. My world expanded with this new sense of geography. It was an exhilarating time.

Four years later, we moved back to the Midwest and traded the lovely Appalachians for the Rocky Mountains. Every summer, we packed the car with camping gear and headed west and north into Canada with our two daughters. When they left for college, we camped across the South and Southwest.

Eventually, my husband and I crossed the Atlantic and backpacked across the British Isles and Europe. And then further - to Asia, Africa, and South America. Travel became a lens to learn about people, whose lives differed from mine. I came to believe each of us need to find commonality with others - whose lives differ from our own.

 My husband and I passed our passion for travel onto our children and grandchildren. Along with learning good-sense wisdom about staying safe. Don’t hike mountain trails alone. Don’t challenge wildlife bigger than you. Carry your passport close to your body. Travel light. Don’t take anything with you that you can’t afford to lose. Learn a few basic words such as please and thank you. Be curious – and respectful. Remember, people from other cultures will be just as curious about you.

Then this winter, the massacre in Paris happened. Paris – one of the safest cities in the world. The terrorists’ target was Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical weekly magazine. Along with so many other people, I was stunned. The world in which I once roamed so freely now held potential dangers I never before imagined.

As different cultures collide, fear of anyone different from oneself festers and sometimes explodes into violence. The challenge that confronts us lies in our present world of instant connection. Via the touch of our fingers on a computer keyboard, we see and hear in ways that were never before possible.

It took decades for my world to expand gradually. I was always literally on another’s territory as a guest. When I returned home, I had ample time to reflect on my experiences, allowing them to transform me.

Every journey added one more piece for me to ponder about both the commonness of cultures and the vast differences in the way people viewed the world and how I saw my own place in an increasingly heterogeneous society.

The world is not the same world I stepped into so many decades ago!

I continue to believe in a fundamental principle. No matter how you feel about the freedom to express views that are counter to your own, raining death upon people never solves anything. These people in Paris, whose lives were cut short, loved their families and friends. And their friends and families loved them in return.

During the week following the tragic event in Paris and after much scrutiny by news analysts and multiple comments by “common folks on the street,” I wrote the following piece of poetry:

             Housebound

an ailing back has me housebound

computer, email, MPR music, connections

to a world temporarily beyond reach

today’s radio play-list grates on my nerves

I ask myself, where do they get some of this music

that wanders in search of a melody

yesterday they played the Sixth Brandenburg

I could live on Bach’s music as a steady diet

throw in a Mozart or two and then more Bach

outside the sky is grey – again

I’ve have lost track of how many days

this winter the sun has hidden itself away

I want tulips, fat red blooms

and daffodil-sunshine to feed my soul

new leaves creating a light-green haze on trees

I want to breath fresh air

not the polluted variety that hangs low

over my city these past months

more important, I want back a trustworthy world

not this one in which terrorists hang low as smog

hooded vultures waiting to descend on innocents

places I’ve traveled no longer feel as safe

Paris, London, Rome, and Madrid

to name a few, airport security on high alert

why can’t we learn to live in peace

without guns and blood-lust, fueling sad

distortions of religions whose true messages are peace

meanwhile I am housebound

filled with yearning for life experiences ahead

for everyone full of laughter, love, and promise

       do I ask for too much?