Outrunning Tornadoes and Classy Weddings

Well, I went to Mississippi again last weekend, and, of course, it can't be just a trip down and back. I was helping my mother do the finishing touches of moving into an apartment, so she ran me ragged. First I had to get there though! On the way down, I had to drive through 7 hours of thunderstorms. I love, love, love bad weather. A good time for me is the Weather Channel and one of their programs like Killer Storms. Me and a bunch of tornado videos equals a great time. Every time a hurricane comes, I immediately want to go and watch. At least until Katrina. I went to the MS Gulf Coast about a month after Katrina and the devastation was so overwhelming, I was glad that I didn't have to actually be in a hurricane. Hurricanes are exciting, but not nearly so much as tornadoes. My mother has this tornado fixation, too, and she has told me tornado stories my whole life. My very first memory of my paternal grandparents is them telling me to stop laughing because we were all hiding behind a door. In MS, older houses are built off the ground as "air conditioning," and as a result, don't have foundations. I think this no foundation problem is what makes trailers so deadly, so basically we were in the house equivalent of a trailer. The tornado supposedly went through the back yard, destroyed an out building, and managed to lay a full grown tree horizontally across the front porch without damaging the roof. My mom tells another story about when I was young child and I slept through a tornado that spun our car around a few times in the road. Don't remember that one, but I do remember the elementary school tornado drill that turned serious. In MS, you do tornado drills like others do fire drills. This means you go out to the hall, tuck your head between your knees, put your arms across your head. You do it three or four times a year. In second grade, we had a huge storm, during which we did a tornado "drill." We were just all sitting and chatting, when all of a sudden, the teachers started yelling at us, telling us "Heads down NOW!" A bit of befuddlement among the kids, but instant 150 kids sobbing hysterically when the teachers assumed the position. Teachers NEVER did the drill. We were a mass of screaming, sobbing babies wanting our mamas. The tornado came about 8 miles away, but it was still pretty scary. My other tornado memory is my mother sticking me in a half bath with a bird, a cat, and a full-grown Labrador. I stood on the sink,holding the cage over my head, while the cat and the dog attacked each other. My mom stood outside and watched

Then the trip last Friday. I am driving down the road in this blinding rain, bobbing along, when I decide I should maybe listen to the weather on the radio. The people on the radio are freaking out about this tornado that they were sure was already on the ground and approaching a F3 level (this is not good since F5 is the tops). It was in some place called Earle,Arkansas. I had no idea where Earle was, but I was pretty sure it was ahead of me in that scary, dark cloud. I start calling everyone I know asking them to find Earle for me. Of course, no one is home, except my dear friend, Elsie, who is quite happy being computer ignorant. She finds Earle, the mile marker I am at, and says it is about 10 miles ahead. I figure it is moving away, so I am somewhat consoled except for the freaked out weather woman on the radio saying, "It is completely enshrouded in rain, so you won't be able to see it coming. Wind has hit 125 miles per hour. SEEK SHELTER NOW." Elsie, meanwhile, it saying, "You need to pull off at a gas station and seek shelter." I am feeling a little rattled, so I start yelling back, "There are no expletive, expletive, expletive shelters around here. It is a bunch of COTTON FIELDS AND DOUBLE WIDES. I DON'T EVEN HAVE A DITCH TO HIDE IN." After I practice yoga breathing for awhile, I start to calm down. Until I look to my right and this is what I see.

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I can't get it to link, so you will have to cut and paste. Now, I am going WAY over the speed limit, and I keep looking and I keep thinking, That is so not a tornado landing in that field about 100 yards from me. Then I realize that yes, in fact, that cloud is spinning, and it is coming down in a point. I tell Elsie (I think it was her I was screaming at at this point), "Oh, there is a tornado pulling out the cloud exactly to my right." "SEEK SHELTER!!!!" Now, the only thing that keeps me from completely freaking out is the fact my dog who is sitting beside me continues to nap. I figure his doggie danger internal warning system would warn me if death was imminent. Apparently, he wasn't worried except for the fact my yelling at Elsie was preventing deep sleep. Even if you were agnostic, you would have been praying at this point. I had no idea my van could go that fast, but I figured that until it touched the ground, I had a chance. I have never been so scared in all my life, including during childbirth, my wedding,and all amusement park rides.

Speaking of weddings, I went to one in MS. It was, of course, beautiful. Now, I must accept the fact that I am old. People whose diapers I changed are now going on honeymoons. All through high school, I babysat the Myers girls. There were four of them, all visions of loveliness. Their mother, Katherine, was everything I wanted to be when I grew up. Skinny, blond, a tennis player, a great mom, classy. She took me in and loved me all the way through high school. In fact, it was my original plan in high school and college to name my first daughter after her. Sorry, Katherine. Between the Myers girls and the Scerra girls for whom I was a nanny, I had basically never babysat a boy. So, when Monkey Boy popped out and he came with dangly parts, I was clueless. It is probably why he is such an odd, wonderful little duck. He is a boy, and I have no advice or insights to offer him. It will probably serve him well in the long term by keeping him out of therapy. So, Myers girl#3 got married this weekend. She married into a famiy that seems to be equally lovely (the kids are all attractive), she seems happy, etc. Marin, Myers girl #3, was always the "smart" one and the "quiet" one (the others were smart, too, but it wasn't as easy for them), and I was a bit surprised she was the first one to settle down. Now, the only way Marin will ever weigh 100 pounds is if she had quadruplets and develops gestational diabetes. She is just an itty bitty, little thing. Now, her sisters and family love her, but they managed to forget to feed and water the poor darlin all day, and on your wedding day nutrition seems so irrelevent. So, the sweet thing just swooned smack dab in the middle of the ceremony, and hubby got to be Prince Charming before the "I dos" were finished. Poor thing. One sister (her maid of honor) stood there thinking, "I wish she would hurry up and pass out and get this over with." One of the other sisters "helped" by positioning the bridesmaids so at least we couldn't see the passed out little angel. All of them say she could get out of this if she so desired because she clearly was not able to be focused during the ceremony. Her mother said we need to hurry and put it on You Tube. Now this sounds kind of awful, but I hope my children love each other as much as the Myers girls love each other and their Mama loves them. Except for the fainting bride bit, it was a beautiful wedding. I got to be "cake girl" which delighted me, despite my long standing derision of that position. I always thought of it as the job you offered your ugly cousin/great aunt/college roommate unworthy of being a bridesmaid. I was totally happy.

So, now the chaos begins. We leave for Germany on Friday for a long overdue visit with Stefan's family. They have struggled a bit over there with health stuff, and it is nice to know that our arrival is viewed as a big old spot of sunshine on a cloudy day. We are not staying at Honey's parents' house for the first time, and are instead renting two different houses. I googled vacation homes and sent some links to hubby. One ended up being the house of his childhood best friend, so he will already know where everything is stored since it still has the same furniture. The other place for the later part of the trip is a farm. It will be Baby Boo's perfect vacation - they have ponies, chickens, baby pigs, and a rooster named Jakob. I think we will have a nice time, and I will eat my mother-in-law's beautiful, beautiful cakes.

The trip back was fine except for the billion years it seemed to take. Then, at 11:00, hubby dear called and told me that a dear, dear friend in Knoxville had been killed. Shanti had been Bunny's babysitter when she was tiny. Her husband is a coworker of hubby's, and Shanti used to babysit Isabel while I pretended to learn German. Bunny would eat a full meal, then walk into her house, climb up in the high chair and sit there with an open mouth like a baby bird until Shanti shoved some lentils and rice in the gullet. She and her husband were out for an evening stroll, walking across a cross walk, when she was hit by a driver who "didn't even see her." I am just stunned, and I can't imagine how her family is coping. Her husband was missed by 6 inches. Shanti was a tiny little thing, so I can see how she might not have been seen, but there were 2 people there! Shanti never learned to speak good English, so I finally told her to speak Hindi with Bunny. Bunny was never a big talker as a young child. In fact, I am convinced the reason she learned to talk is so she could order Monkey Boy around. She would walk up and say a word, "Elephant" "Blueberry" "construction worker" and never say it again. Now, one day when I went to pick her up at Shanti's house, she was just jabbering a way. I thought it was baby babble, but Shanti was clearly responding to her. I finally said, "Is she saying something?" Shanti says, "Oh, yes, she is telling me all about the birds on teh feeder." She had never said a sentence to me, but she is CONVERSING in Hindi? Now, I had a party trick. We would stick Bunny in the middle of the room, and I would tell her to do stuff in English, her father in German, and Shanti in Hindi, and she would do it. It was enormously entertaining. Of course, we complicated it further by moving to Sweden and sticking her in Swedish preschool. It is all good because she supposedly has a unique form of dyslexia that doesn't influence her ability to read, but is enough that it will supposedly prevent her from learning foreign languages. Clearly a faulty test. Shanti loved my children as her own, and I can't believe she is gone. I will miss her.

Later