1 Mother 2 Another

So there Brian and I sat last night,
trying to catch up on our tiVo, when we suddenly hear the tornado
sirens going off. We check our bedroom and sure enough, our weather
radio’s come on with a tornado warning.


Hello??? Isn’t this December???

We had to wake the girls (this is near
midnight) and rush into our storm closet, a place we hadn’t
seen since last spring and which, frankly, wasn’t quite ready
for us. I’d not anticipated needing it again until next
spring and had allowed the path to the back to become a bit, ahem,
cluttered. So Brian’s furiously throwing things out of the
closet, Maddie’s blinking in bewilderment, and Cora’s
shaking from disorientation in my arms. Suddenly Maddie starts
coughing and trembling, moaning “No, no,” over and
over, and I’m convinced she’s about to throw up. And I
can’t imagine having to be in a half closet with four other
people for any stretch of time, especially with the smell of vomit
in the air.


But Maddie calmed down and we got ourselves in the closet. And on a
side note, a friend of mine with a sick child was not so lucky, and
did indeed spend some time in a vomit-scented closet last night.


We were only there about twenty minutes; a tornado hovered a mile
from our house and moved on rather swiftly. Thanks to modern
technology, we got updates via cellphone from a relative a bit
further north, comfortably planted in front of her television, nary
a storm closet in sight.


Unlike our first trip to the storm closet in the spring, this one
was not new or exciting and the novelty had definitely worn off.
Maddie weeped fretfully from fatigue and Cora tried to burrow
further in my arms. Sleep was impossible for both girls, of course,
and Maddie finally calmed down for a few minutes, staring wide-eyed
at our kinetic radio we keep there for emergencies – the kind
you have to wind up to power. After only a short time of silence,
though, Maddie began crying again, saying, “I really need to
go back to bed right this minute! I can’t wait any longer! I
have to go to sleep!” And as insane as it sounds, being as
I'm a grown woman and all, I was irrationally relieved that my own
mom was in the closet with us. I guess mommies just make us feel
better, no matter when.


We crawled out a few minutes later after getting the all-clear, and
worked our way back upstairs. Maddie dropped off almost immediately
but Cora needed to be rocked a good half hour; every time
she’d start to fall asleep she’d jerk worriedly back
awake.


All in all, no harm done, though definitely there was loss of sleep
all around. But it reminded me once again of how little control we
have over our own lives. I expect certain risks at certain times of
the year: blizzards in New York in January, hurricanes in September
in Hawaii, tornadoes in Texas in the spring. But a tornado in
December? That’s something that shakes me out of my comfort
zone, even my natural disaster zone.


Don’t tell me there’s no such thing as global
warming.