joplin tornado

call 417-624-1995 or 417-623-0400 to make a donation to the independent living center tornado relief account through southwest missouri bank.

or go to www.ilcenter.org to make a paypal donation.

today is my 8th wedding anniversary. yesterday was the sweetie's fortieth birthday. the day before that was the tornado. here is how it started. the seventy year old father calls, chatting about the storm, bragging about the hail battering the yard. i hear something muffled and he puts down the phone. i know he is standing out in the yard, getting the biggest hail to put in the freezer so he can show the grandsons. i am pretty sure this impish disregard for reason was something my own mother interpreted as badboy sassiness when she fell for him but i want to reach through the phone and shake him for going out there. he comes back to the phone, beaned more than once by the hail, then says he ought to go before the weather gets too bad. we are not the sort of people who stay on the phone during a storm. and there's a tornado watch, after all. but there are tornado watches all the time. they are boys crying wolf, making you hide in the basement or the bathtub or in the closet, foolish and stuffy. you come out feeling ripped off. tricked.

i wait. twenty or so minutes later he calls back, saying everything in a voice that tells me he is trying to make sure i don't worry in case he gets the wrong words out first. he says tornado. he tells me the sisters, sane women who live in houses with basements, are okay. he says he and mom are also okay because their windowless bathroom makes a mighty fine tornado shelter. i will tell you right now if a tornado is spinning smack over you nothing above ground makes a mighty fine tornado shelter but there is no telling him anything. he says watch the weather channel.

we watch most of the evening, the sweetie and me. image after image of a place i've never been in my life. i see the hospital where i wandered from room to room in my candy striper dress, filling water pitchers and changing towels. it is broken. it is all alone. there is nothing else. there is nothing anywhere. my lungs feel thick. i worry about strange things- tiny little fred 'n red's all alone there on main street, dogs who might wander over downed electrical wires. but they are all safe, the family. they are fine. dad tells me each time i talk to him like he isn't sure i'm convinced.

the sisters call and send texts. the baby sister's words are, simply, it is horrible here. the middle sister sends photos she's taken. they are exactly like every other photo i've seen of what used to be where i am from. it is awful to think of her there in the middle of so much emptiness. each photo comes with a word or two to help me decipher them. somewhere on 26th. the house alan was helping with. gas station at 20th and duquesne. dead cows in field behind the gas station. aunt mary's neighborhood. but i can't tell them apart. she ends with across the street is mostly untouched.

the family is out in the middle of things. to be sure, it is who they are. but the truth is, everyone in town who can help is out in the middle of things. because that is who they are, too. and i am here looking at photo after photo while my family is sifting through what is left of my aunt mary's house. while my sisters are trying to help the folks at their i.l.c., folks who have met with plenty of challenges already. some are dead or lost but more than forty are without anything but themselves. and i am still here, yelling at bored kids about langston hughes. about martin espada. about how important everything is.

but monday is my birthday (right. of course. memorial day) and i want something other than to share my birthday one more time with the war dead and the barbecues and sales. i want a toothbrush. i want soap. a laundry basket. towels. forks. i want a frame for a family photo. a stupid barbie. generally, i don't like to ask so directly, but this is what i can do and so here i am. folks have temporary shelter and clothing and food. there will be money down the road for rebuilding. but right now today this minute people in my town need shampoo. antacid. maybe a stuffed bear. they need what will make things seem a little closer to normal.

both my bossy sisters thank you. my ridiculous parents who will not listen to reason thank you. my strange little midwestern town thanks you. i thank you. this is the most important present i could ever get.