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Tornado! Vicitm or survivor?

 

Pat and Dennis loved their families, but it worked better for them to live in Salina, ninety miles away from their parents’ homes in Wichita, Kansas. When they visited, they left on a Friday night, and returned late on Saturday, because Sunday was a busy day for them.

 

That weekend looked to be beautiful, a perfect time for visiting. This time, Pat packed extra diapers for the baby and an extra blanket. She was never able to explain her reasoning, even to herself. It just seemed to be the right thing to do.

 

After supper Saturday night, Pat enjoyed a piece of delicious chocolate cake and a cup of tea. But the cake tasted so delicious, she decided to have a second piece, much to her husband’s displeasure. They needed to get up early in the morning, and if she stayed as long as she wanted, it would be midnight before they got home. His frown said it all, but she still enjoyed a second piece of cake and a second cup of tea.

 

Finally they headed for home, with the toddler in the back seat, sound asleep, and the baby in her lap. The lulling of the ride put her to sleep too.

 

A loud crash awoke her. They were in the middle of a tremendous thunder storm. Lightening flashed about every other second, with thunder following in the seconds in between. Rain poured against the windshield at so furious a rate, the wipers gave them seconds to see the road ahead. They had to be going at least seventy miles an hour.

 

“You’re going too fast!” she told her husband.

 

“I’m going five miles an hour,” he informed her, his lips set in a grim line. “The wind’s driving the rain at us as if I were speeding.”

“How long has this been going on?”

 

“A little while. You slept through some of it.”

 

She wasn’t asleep now. She stared into the storm, realizing that the only times they could see anything was during the flashes of lightening. The headlights showed very little. If it weren’t for the lightening, they would have missed the exit off the interstate.

 

They edged off the interstate and headed home. But no city lights greeted them. They had to depend on the lightening to help them count blocks to get to their street.

 

She began to breathe a little easier when they finally turned onto their street. They were still going very slowly. Now they were counting driveways.

 

As Dennis turned into their driveway, his headlights touched the tree in the front. Now it was snapped off halfway up the trunk. It hadn’t been a small tree.

 

“Oh, Dennis, the tree!” Pat exclaimed when she saw the jagged remainder of the trunk.

 

A second later the car’s headlights hit the house. Its walls, blown outward, rested on the ground, and the roof was gone. Rain poured onto everything they owned.

 

“Oh, Dennis, the house!” She hardly sounded intelligent at all. As she looked at her husband, he returned it with a worried look of his own. She could almost read his thoughts: Am I going to have to face this all alone?

 

She realized she had a choice in that moment. She could fall apart and have her husband take care of her, or she could take a deep breath and become the support he needed. She looked at the babies, and realized she only had one choice after all.

 

“Well,” she said, “maybe we should go back to Wichita.” At least her parents' place was dry.

 

Dennis looked at the gas gauge. “We need to get some gas first.”

 

By now all they were facing was a deluge of rain, no longer the lightning, thunder and an incredible wind. But there were still no lights on anywhere.

 

Dennis headed back toward the highway to find a gas station. He still drove slowly, but this time due to the amazing amount of debris on the road. Huge branches, roofing, parts of walls, metal, wood and leaves littered the road. He drove around all of it.

 

A telephone or electric wire swung across the highway. Afraid it might be a live wire, Dennis slammed on his breaks. The baby, still in Pat’s arms, flung forward into the air conditioner.

 

(In those days there weren’t car seats. In addition, neither did cars come with air conditioning. If a person wanted air conditioning, he purchased a unit and had it installed. This was one of those, with sharp edges on the vents.)

 

The baby’s forehead smashed against the edge of a vent. Blood poured from the wound getting all over the baby's face and her shirt. Pat grabbed an extra diaper (all diapers were cloth at that time) and pressed it against the wound. She was relieved to discover that the cut was small, but it was deep and bleeding quite a bit.

 

“I guess we need to go to the hospital instead,” she said. “This may need stitches.”

 

Dennis agreed. He changed directions and headed for the hospital. Now no more than a light rain fell.

 

They stood at the admission desk, and were asked what happened.

 

“Well, a tornado took our house and …”

 

“There wasn’t a tornado last night,” the admissions clerk informed them.

 

She gave the clerk a surprised look, and said, “When we left to go to Wichita Friday night, our house was there, and now it isn’t. Something took our house.”

 

As they waited to be seen, people from a local trailer park began arriving. After them, people from Kanopolis Reservoir also came. One of the women, shivering from shock, looked so sad, Pat wrapped her extra blanket around the woman until she was called to be seen.

 

The doctor examined her baby’s forehead, cleaned the blood off, and applied a butterfly bandage. “Head wounds tend to bleed a lot,” he explained. “Your baby is fine.”

 

The next question facing them was where to go. They couldn’t afford a motel.

 

“I heard there’s a shelter in the basement of the police station,” Dennis told his wife. “We’ll see if that’s true.”

 

So a few minutes later, they stood at the front desk of the police station, being asked what they wanted.

 

“A tornado took our house last night…”

 

“There wasn’t a tornado last night,” the desk officer said.

 

“Well,” Pat said, this time with a bit of sauce, “Friday night, when we went to Wichita, our house was there, and now it isn’t. Something took our house.”

 

As they were speaking, people from the trailer park began arriving, all seeking shelter in the basement.

 

The desk person relented. They were led to the basement, where people began setting up cots and blankets. Card tables and chairs were also set up, because very few wanted to sleep, including Pat and Dennis.

 

After Pat settled the babies on one of the cots, she sat with her husband at a card table and they talked over a few things, not quite making plans, but not rehashing the storm either.

 

A woman from the trailer park asked to join them. “I just got divorced,” she said as she sat down. “All I wanted from my horrible marriage was our beautiful crushed velvet bedspread. I got it. But the tornado turned my trailer over on its side, breaking the windows, and rain came inside, ruining the spread.”

 

They laughed about that. Pat realized she had just found another choice point. They could either laugh or cry. They had chosen to laugh at the irony of the situation, and not at the fact that they had just lost everything they owned.

 

A reporter getting stories from the survivors avoided their table. Laughter wasn’t a part of his focus. Pat laughed about that as well.

Neither she nor her husband could sleep that night. The babies slept well, which was good. They didn’t need to deal with fussy babies too.

 

In the morning, she and her husband decided to see how their neighbors and done. They found it strange that only their side of the street had been affected. Their friends from across the street hadn’t even been touched. Their friends asked them to stay “as long as you need to.”

 

Both Pat and Dennis knew better. The best way to lose a good friend was to move in with them. She was facing another choice point: don’t be a victim, be a survivor.

 

While her husband left to see what he could salvage, Pat got on the phone. Everyone from the trailer park and all of her neighbors on her side of the street were homeless. They would all need housing immediately. Pat knew if she didn’t get something right away, they would lose these good friends.

 

First, however, Pat needed to call her church. She and her husband were supposed to be greeters that Sunday. Even though there was no one in the office, she knew if she let the phone ring, eventually someone would answer it. It rang for fifteen minutes. The way Pat looked at it was, she had this one thing to do first, and she would do it.

 

When someone finally answered, she explained the situation, telling them that they wouldn’t be able to be greeters at church this Sunday, that her only clothing was bloody from her baby’s head wound last night. They understood sounding very sympathetic. But Pat wasn’t interested in their sympathy. She only wanted to make sure she had discharged that one responsibility.

 

Her next phone calls were to secure a place to stay. She found one small farmhouse just outside of town that would work. They could afford it, and it had enough room for the four of them. We have passed a milestone, she believed. While everyone else was recovering from the disaster of losing their homes, her choices had not left her helpless. Once again she had been the first in line.

 

They spent one night in their friend’s home. The next was in their new home.

 

That day, Salina, Kansas, was declared a disaster area, and Pat and Dennis were declared disaster victims. Their parents arrived that afternoon. Pat’s mother tried to encourage her to take a nap, but she refused. There was too much to get done. She could sleep tonight. As they walked through the debris of what had been their home and possessions, they separated could be salvaged from what couldn’t. When Pat saw her living room, she laughed.

 

“I don’t usually keep house like this,” she explained to her mother-in-law. “This looks like a tornado ran through it!”

 

Her mother-in-law’s look of concern made her laugh as well. “She’s in shock,” the woman said to her daughter. “When she realizes what has happened, she’ll come back to earth.”

 

But Pat had just passed another choice point. She kept her attitude positive by focusing on humor, which gave her the ability to think far more clearly than her mother-in-law expected her to.

 

Her husband met the Governor of Kansas, who also wanted to offer sympathy. But neither Dennis nor his wife considered themselves victims. They realized it was because of the choices they had made throughout this whole incident.

 

Once they made the first choice, not to give into either panic or depression, the other choices came much easier. As a result, not only had they passed from victim to survivor, they had been able to help others do the same.

 

We always have more choices than we realize.

 

Go with God, family. Remember: “No weapon formed against you shall prosper.” Isaiah 54:17

We will see each other in health.

 

Blessings,

Mama Prepper