April Weather

The air is still and heavy. To still. Almost thick. Not that they feel it. They are all inside, the parents visiting with a friend. The children lay on their bellies in front of the TV watching Sesame Street ™.

Behind the adults, in the dining room, where they sit around the table, drinking coffee and playing cards, is a big picture window. Behind it is the back yard that stretches into a field.

There are no weather bulletins on PBS, not then. Therefore no warnings.

If the father hadn't happened to look up when he did, it would have ended in a very different way. But he did. Thanks be to God, he did.

It approaches from the field moving directly towards them. It is all he can see, the swirling mass of deadly wind. It fills the horizon.

Things move very fast but later would seem to be moving in slow motion. The children!

The father grabs the daughter while the mother, the son. They and their friend run towards the garage and the car. The children are thrown in the back seat floor board while the mother, via instinct or maybe instructions from the father, places herself over them, placing her body between her children and the coming tornado. The father and his friend take the front seat and they drive.

The little car shouldn't be a match for the funnel. Shouldn't no, but they aren't the only five in the car, as the father writes in an article for the local paper later. The sixth unseen person is the same one who joined the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace. For God rode with them as they outran the F 5 tornado.

Behind them, their house and all the others in their cul-de-sac, became nothing but rubble. There would be no structure standing when the father drove back in, three days later.

Houses are lifted up from their foundations and thrown, like an angry toddler that needs a nap. The wind is mighty, turning a drinking straw into a bullet that becomes part of an oak tree. Entering its trunk without bending or breaking. The tree remains standing.

Cars decorate the trees like oversized birds. Roofs are found miles away from where they once stood. Pets that survive, including the dog forgotten by the fleeing family, develop PTSD.

A baby, ripped out of its mother's arms, is found in a cemetery many miles away.

It isn't all horror, though mainly it is. Had the storm happened an hour early, it would have hit the teenagers and their drama teacher, practicing the spring play, in the high school auditorium. The entire school, including the aforementioned auditorium , was flattened by the wind.

Looking for the helpers, Mister Rogers said, many are found. Neighbors whose homes were spared the complete destruction of their homes, housed those who weren't so blessed.

The family we are talking about found shelter, right after, with a friend a few towns over. Later, they stayed with the children's grandparents, their maternal grandparents, as their house was being rebuilt.

Two things are recovered from the pile of bricks and wood that used to be a family home. One, surprisingly, are the son’s tonka trucks™. Truly indestructible. The other is the family’s dog. She is alive but too messed up to be a part of a family with children. She is rehomed with their great aunt and uncle.

The town is traumatized but strong. That middle of the country, flyover state, isn't about to be kept down by a tornado. No way.

Three days after the storm came through, tearing the small town apart, people are allowed to come back in. Streets that used to exist, exist no longer. Landmarks have been carried off by the wind. The National guard moves through the quiet streets, placing X's in front of the houses, or where houses used to be, as they are cleared. When the houses are rebuilt, the X’s remain, a reminder.

The father returns to see what the storm left. The entire neighborhood is gone. The level of destruction is stunning, total. Still hope and the sense of humor necessary to get them through it, remains. Someone had spray painted on the side of their destroyed home the ironic saying, gone with the wind.

It wasn't easy to find where his house used to be. When he does, he weeps. It is completely gone. Every house around where his used to stand is similarly gone. His neighbors have nothing either. He has his children, his wife. Blessed. He reminds himself that he is blessed.

Still, when he rejoins them, he is still crying. Of all that has happened since she was jerked up from in front of the TV, this is the one thing his daughter remembers. She never expected to see her daddy cry.

They rebuild. The city does. They have mostly the same neighbors. No, the people of the heartland don't easily give up.

Several things are added to the town. First, a shelter in the heart of the town. Second a siren system that draws the townspeople to the shelter whenever it blares across the town.

Some have basements and use them, in lui of the shelter. The grandfather they stay with is one of them. Whenever the wind picks up, whenever it gets a bit dark outside, he moves into the basement. The siren doesn't need to sound.

They rebuild the house before promptly selling it. The mother can't live there. Understandable, as it is the place her children almost died. Her father lives in the basement during storm season. She ops to live in a completely different state.

The family moves out of tornado alley and south, to the father's family. There they find a sense of safety from the weather but a different threat unseen but felt. A growing storm within the father, built up from his own father and the family he built. The family he abused.

The safety they seek isn't found there. The next storm will last a lot longer than a day.