Moore in May

It's a curious mindset we have, citizens of Moore in the month of May. With each storm that rolls in and each day that forecasters warn of tornado potential, we shrug our shoulders and say to each other, "Well, it's Moore in May." I'm sure that there are places in the world that become accustomed to environmental dangers that surround the area (I won't even go into man-made dangers like war zones), and, well, Moore is one of them. I'm not sure if the target is over us specifically or what, but the month of May sometimes leaves us pretty scarred around here.

To friends who are reading this in other places, the mindset of Moore residents probably doesn't seem normal on many levels. I sometimes hear people ask, "Why do they choose to live there?" Well, there is a fairly straightforward answer to that for most of us: it's home. Our families, friends, neighbors, homes, histories, schools, and community networks are here. What keeps anyone in the town where they live? Sometimes it's the people, or the parks, or the cultural life, or the amazing food, or the weather. People often like where they live, and lots of people like living here for many of the reasons listed above. Oklahoma City is great, and I like it a lot. My little suburb to the south is a nice place for us to raise our family, send our kids to good schools, be near our parents, and be near many of our friends.

That being said, the thoughts that I sometimes have about the weather, my home, etc. probably aren't typical for most Americans. Yes, I know that every region of the country has its own plights with which to deal. California is kin to earthquakes as New England is cozied up with blizzards. Perils of the environment happen everywhere. But, how often do you really think about the true possibility of losing your home and everything in it to a storm? I think of it often. Very often, in fact, and have become increasingly comfortable with that notion over the past two years, should it ever have to happen to us (knock on wood it won't). How often do you hear your kids point out damage around the town and ask, "Is that damage from the medium tornado or the big tornado?" They are referring to two recent tornadoes that Moore took a hit from, one which was medium-sized this April, and one was the EF-5 behemoth that devastated us two years ago. Silas remembers both. How many of us have five-year-olds that can easily recall two separate natural disasters that happened in their community?

How many have been told by their husbands, "We need to get the kids' birth certificates back into the safety deposit box. (We had taken them out to make copies for a trip.) They probably shouldn't be laying around on the dresser since it's May." Because, duh, they might blow away and never be seen again after a tornado rips through the house. A commonplace thought, right? And how many of us really need to mop the floor after the kids go to bed, but hazardous storms are expected shortly and so we put our dirty floors off to another night---not because we need to keep an eye on the weather (which we do), but because, dammit, I don't want to mop my floors tonight if I'm going to lose my roof to a tornado in an hour. That would be a giant waste of time, right?

There are several pieces of good news here. One is that our house is still standing, and it's May 22! We're almost there! The other is that my kids are total troopers. They stay super cool and collected when it's time to go to the shelter, and they understand on a juvenile level that we might lose it all, but we won't get hurt and we won't lose each other, and that's all that really matters. Flood waters rose from the creek that runs alongside our house on the evening of May 6, as we accumulated 9.38 inches of rain in a matter of just a few hours. That night, I suddenly feared the tornadoes less as I realized I might be about to lose my house to a flood first. The water came within three feet of our western wall, though we still had a foot of foundation to go up. In any case, my kids were as ready as they could be for that too. Several of their backyard toys got whisked away by rising waters, and they gracefully accepted that the toys were gone forever. A trip into the woods behind our house later that week turned up successful though, as I was able to retrieve the three big ones that were lost. See if you can see the wheels of their riding excavator sticking out of that debris pile 100 feet behind our neighbor's house. That took me 15 minutes alone just to dig that one out, and I flicked three spiders off myself in the process. My reward was that I was heralded as some kind of war hero by my children as I emerged from the woods, tattered and filthy, but triumphantly wielding that darn excavator.


These days when storms are expected, my two older kids ask to sleep on a pallet on our bedroom floor. We acquiesce, knowing that storms around here can be loud and scary. When the going gets tough, though, my kids know how to prioritize, and they know how to chip in, help, and prepare. They are becoming well-versed in the storm shelter preparation routine, and they relish some parts of it. Trips to the shelter entail digging into the fruit snacks and Cheez-Its that we keep stocked down there. Hey, if you have to huddle in a dark three-by-eight space for an hour whilst listening to sirens and pounding storms, you might as well get some dinosaur fruit snacks out of the deal! I couldn't be prouder of my kids, just as I couldn't be prouder of my fellow Moore citizens. We are friends with some who have lost all earthly possessions, and they have undeniably had a rough road to bear. I am so proud of all of them and their spirit as they- we- continue to move forward. We're tough around here, and we like to help each other...and you can add that to the list of reasons why I just don't want to move.

The tornado siren: the soundtrack of May

Asleep on the floor in our bedroom

This wasn't the night of the flood; this was just a normal stormy day this May.

THIS was the flood.

The entrance to our neighborhood. Yep.

The debris line came within three feet of the house near the dining room.

The clouds we saw as we came out of the shelter on May 6th

Our routine on tornado-potential days: pull the van all the way forward, open the shelter, and vacuum out all the dead spiders with my friend Julie's amazing hand vac. I think I need one of those things!

In goes the lantern, the radio, the keys, garage door opener, and a pair of shoes of each boy's choosing.

Our Storm Shelter!

Purchasing a storm shelter has always been a point of debate between BJ and me. He knew when he married me that he was marrying a girl from Moore, and girls from Moore know all about tornadoes. I'm no stranger to hiding in closets and crowding into neighbors' cellars during tornado warnings, and this occurred throughout my life. Then when I was 18, a large part of the city was destroyed by an F5 (the first one) with 320mph wind speeds, and I was crowded into a cellar with 26 other people while it went a mile and a half north of us; we could hear it and feel it even from that distance though. So, all this to say, when BJ married me, he knew he was marrying a girl who needed a 'fraidy-hole in order to feel secure. Somehow we made it ten years without me forcing the issue enough to tip the scale for a purchase, although to BJ's credit, four of those years were spent in Minnesota where you really don't need a cellar (plus we had a basement) and another was spent in a rent house in Tulsa. We have now been homeowners in Moore for five years. In that five years' time, our metro has seen two tornadoes (one of them 500 feet just to our north) in which you can do everything you're supposed to be doing but still die if you're not below ground. People in their closets died. Mothers named Catherine Hamil and Laurinda Vargyas who were in their tubs laying on top of their children on May 24, 2011 and May 20, 2013, respectively, each had two of their children sucked out from under them and killed. I have no fear greater than this--that I won't be able to save my children from a tornado. For weeks after May 20th this year I had nonstop nightmares about tornadoes, nearly all of which centered around my kids. Knowing that these women did all the right things and still couldn't save their children led me to the undeniable realization that I had to have a place to go, HERE in our home.

On May 21st of this year, as we struggled with guards to try to get into our cordoned-off neighborhood, we walked through devastation like I've only seen in 1999 (and I'm talking both real and TV, although I should definitely include 9/11 as well). We made our way through twisted remnants of cars, snapped poles, tiny bits of debris, and God knows what else, and I remarked to BJ,
"You know what this means, don't you?"
I could have meant a million things by that, but of course he knew exactly what I was talking about.
"Yeah," he agreed reluctantly. "We're getting a storm shelter."
"Yes. Immediately." I replied.

So I got us on the list 12 days later, and today it was installed!

The guys from Smart Shelter said they would be here between 7:00 and 8:00AM, but they rang our doorbell ready to go at 6:40, as we were all still lying in bed. And then the fun began!

Digging the hole with Silas' favorite truck, an excavator!

There is our shelter before it's in the ground. Hard to believe that in an identical model in our next-door neighbors' garage, we were able to fit in eight adults, five children, and a collie on May 31st this year. It's amazing the size of hole you can squeeze into when you're scared for your life.

Watching the installation was the entertainment of our morning! We even ate our waffles and bananas outside on these chairs so that we could view the progress.

There goes the shelter into the hole!

Voila! The boys can't wait to get in it tonight and try it out.

We bought our shelter on sale and feel that we got a great deal! The guys worked hard and were out of here by 8:45 this morning. Thanks Smart Shelter! And thanks to BJ, for not giving me any kind of hard time about money that I believe is well-spent. He doesn't think we'll ever technically need the shelter, and hopefully he is right. But with the $2895 we just spent, he has bought his wife peace of mind forever. I will no longer fear tornado season because it can't hurt me or my family anymore.

May 20: A Million Things

 I think this will be my last 'May 20' post. I think. While the process of debris removal and cleanup continues in Moore and the process of rebuilding is just beginning, the people of Moore have proven again that they are a lovely people who work, fight, and play together. BJ and I have been so pleased to see our community come together in a voting contest to help rebuild Veterans Park, which is our neighborhood park that was destroyed in the storm. At this point, the southern end of the park is now open again for walkers, joggers, and families; the northern end, which took the most direct hit, still looks like a wasteland, and sadly that is where the park's main attractions were. As of now, the playground, picnic pavilion, covered bridge, and veterans memorial are gone or damaged, but we are eager about the rebuilding process, and this contest could help a lot! If you haven't signed up yet to vote, please do by clicking here! Voting ends on July 14 I believe, and the votes count for double on those last couple of days! Currently Veterans Park holds a lead, which would be a prize of $100K.

Last week I also received in the mail my Oklahoma heart necklace from a local jewelry-maker called Vintage Pearl. Half of the proceeds went to Oklahoma disaster relief, and this necklace helped by raising $180,000 worth of funds! Now I can carry on me always my love for my community and a reminder of its strength. Hooray!

On a more serious note, I don't think I can do justice by trying to describe the emotions that most people in Moore continue to feel on a very frequent basis. Heartache and grief are not over, and not only for those who lost a loved one or their home. Even for BJ and me, whose material losses were unspeakably small, a feeling of grief and sadness pervades our beings at times as we reflect on the storm or drive about town through the remnants of what is left. The area of 4th and Telephone is particularly upsetting for me, and it was the intersection in town that I avoided the longest because I knew it would be hard for me to face. BJ and I drove through this intersection daily before the tornado; the 7-Eleven where Megan and Case Futrell and Terri Long were killed was our primary gas-up spot. Donuts are across the street, the recycling center was a few blocks north, the Moore Medical Center which is home to our amazing pediatrician Dr. Harmon is right at the intersection, and just behind it was Plaza Towers Elementary (where seven children were killed), businesses, and hundreds of homes. Now, it is a vast expanse of nothing. It truly looks like a war zone, and I kid you not when I tell you that it cripples our hearts to drive through. Crosses stand at the 7-Eleven, toothpick trees remain at the nearby Little River Park, and barren concrete pads where there used to be buildings greet the eye as one looks into a half-mile wide expanse of nothing remaining, smack dab in the middle of the city. We drove through the intersection three evenings ago and I was flooded with the familiar heartache; I asked BJ,
"How long do you think it will be before we can drive through here without feeling so awful?"
His slow response: "Oh... Probably never."
He's right. I know he's right but I didn't want to hear it. Of course this will never really leave us because it has become a part of us...it just sucks because it's a part of us that hurts. And then the light turned green and we drove through, the hundredth time I have driven through sobbing.

Megan and Case Futrell. My story on Megan and Case is not done here; I actually have the opportunity to share with the world an amazing contribution that Megan and Case both made to the Oklahoma Mother's Milk Bank following their passing, but details must follow later. May their sweet souls rest in peace.

Dr. Harmon, on the right, pictured outside the Moore Medical Center on the first day of demolition. Goodness, how we love Dr. Harmon!

As BJ and I got out about a month ago and surveyed the damage to our familiar haunts on the west side of Moore (we live on the east side and had mostly limited our travels to there), we saw firsthand the devastation that was done to my uncle's home and Wallace Horse Park, which is located right next door to the famous Orr Family Farm. Ten years ago next month, BJ and I were married in the backyard of my uncle's beautiful home; it had been the dream home that I had eyed since childhood, and when my aunt and uncle purchased it I couldn't have been more thrilled. They graciously allowed us to invite our friends and family to celebrate our vows in August 2003 in their beautiful backyard, and our memories are untarnished although the house was devastated. Next door is the horse park where my family lived for a year while I was in college. My parents were in the process of building their current home, so we rented the ranch house there on the park and lived next door to my aunt and uncle. I can't describe to you how much fun it was to live there! The horse park was home to about 200 horses, stables, an arena, and pastures for the horses to graze upon. Some of the horses were my regular friends and I visited them daily in the pasture right outside my bedroom window; I even named a few of the horses, although I know these sweet girls belonged to someone else and already had names, I didn't know what they were so I created names like Kissing Annette and Golden Glory. My mom would even wake in the middle of the night to help the ranch hands, who also lived on houses on the horse park property, deliver horse babies when the time had come. When it was time for us to move to my parents' new house, my mom was given one of the horses that she helped to birth in exchange for her promise that she would not race him. She named him Baron and he is a giant turkey. I smile just thinking about these times.

On the afternoon of May 20, the horse park took a direct hit. Three-quarters of the horses were killed, and all of the buildings on the horse park property, including the ranch house where we made our memories, were completely annihilated. Not a wall was left standing on that entire farm. My brother told me the story of a ranch hand who didn't even take cover; up until the time the tornado actually hit, he was running frantically from stall to stall, opening gates as quickly as possible, giving each horse a chance to escape doom. As the winds bore down, the giant stable collapsed. The ranch hand, whose name I don't know, amazingly survived with injury as he was buried in the rubble.

A few weeks after the tornado hit, I was relaying these tales to my best friend via text.  I told her about our wedding, the ranch house, our fun times, the devastation from the storm, the dead horses, and the story of the ranch hand. She asked me incredulously,
"How have you not told me about this part before now?"
I read her question aloud to BJ and we both vocalized roughly the exact same thought:
"Because...it was just one of a million things. We lost so much that day. It was only one of so many pieces lost, and where do you even start or finish?"

Thousands upon thousands of people in Moore, southwest Oklahoma City, and Newcastle have "pieces" from May 20. For them, it probably isn't the site where they got married, but it was something else plus something else plus something else, all adding up to one giant swirling loss that continues to be dealt with today. I daresay we'll carry these pieces forever, just as BJ suspected when I asked him how long it's going to hurt to drive through 4th and Telephone. We can't exactly forget a million things.

May 20 and May 31: The Impact on Silas

I can think of many words that describe the process of watching Silas process the, ah, 'inclement weather,' that we have had in Moore over the course of the past month. The words interesting and heartbreaking are the two that most often come to mind for me. Not a day goes by that he doesn't talk about what has happened or somehow incorporate it into his play. As a psychologist, I know how important it is for him to be able to express his feelings about what has happened, whether through questions, observations, or play, because his feelings are absolutely as valid as mine or anyone else's; I also know that young children typically process the big things in life by playing about them because they aren't mature enough to sit down and talk about them like you and I can. At times I find myself cheering him on a bit, even if silently, because he is doing what he is supposed to be doing. Still, when it happens I sometimes hate to see it, and I hate that it has come to this---games that remind me of the destruction of my own community.

When I look around at what this boy sees everyday, I think, how could he not take notice? How could he not be impacted? I told my friend Sommer that I fear these will be the first memories that his three-year-old mind permanently creates, because the magnitude of what he has experienced with this is truly that big. Our home cannot be accessed without driving directly through ground zero, which is only a few hundred feet away. He sees his parents and all of the adults in his life talking about the tornado, its aftermath, what we were doing, what we were thinking, although fortunately these conversations are becoming less frequent as the adults here are moving on as well. We are not to be blamed for this either; waiting to talk about this until after the children go to bed is absolutely impractical when for a long time it was all we could think about, when we were all engaging in hours and days and weeks of cleanup, when we all get skittish about storms rolling in. The tornado has simply become a new normalcy here, and there is nothing that anybody can do to change that. I realized as I saw the damage for the first time myself that there would be no hiding this from Silas, so he would have to face it like the rest of us, except in a more kid-appropriate way. When normal things like your post office, your pediatrician's office, your bank, your primary gas station, your restaurants, your parks, and parts of your neighborhood are gone, you deserve to know why and not to have it hidden from you.

May 31 didn't help things at all. Everyone was nervous all day long about the forecast for the day, and sure enough another EF-5 tornado did take place on the other side of the metro that evening, resulting in more loss of life. This tornado also spawned smaller ones, at least one of which hit Moore again and caused further damage. Spending yet more time watching the storm chasers and meteorologists on TV was upsetting him, but we had to watch it for our own safety; and when it was time to make our way to the underground shelter next door, we did the best we could and made as good a time as we could of it with eight adults, five children, a dog, and supplies down in a 3x8 foot cement hole in the ground for 45 minutes. I couldn't help thinking the whole time though, this does nothing but solidify the impact of this season on all of us, including our beloved children.

 The crazy clouds before the May 31 storm. Never a good sign!

 The May 31 storm making its way into the metro. The sky was so dark and foreboding that I lost my appetite during dinner. This is extraordinarily dark for this time of day; you can see some of the lighter shades of sky just above those houses to the right. 

 Six inches of rain fell that night, and BJ joked that we suddenly had lakefront property.

Silas has shown BJ and me that he is thinking about the tornadoes in practically a hundred ways. He becomes visibly nervous when it storms, and he refuses to sleep in his own room if it storms at night. When the thunder becomes loud enough during a storm at any time, he announces that "It's time to go to the cellar now!" Not only does he continue to point out obvious signs of the tornado's damage as we drive about town (such as, "That car got crushed by the tornado."), but he also sees the tornado's 'damage' in things that truly have nothing to do with the tornado (such as he bends over and picks up a jagged rock out of the street and says, "Mommy, this rock got broken. The tornado did that to it.") At least once a day I hear him tell his construction vehicles to take quick cover because a tornado is coming; I may interject as the vehicles are hiding under curtains and ask, "Is the tornado finished yet?" and he may reply, "Yeah, but here comes another one!" His lifetime aspirations now include driving various construction vehicles (namely a feller buncher) so that he can assist with clean-up in the park that he misses. And when he sees someone walking in the direction of the park as we are driving by, he excitedly asks if they are going to play in the park. We always tell him that the park is still broken and can't be played in, and it is obvious to us that he had hoped that maybe somebody had fixed it all up while we had gone about our day.

I love my little three-year-old boy and I'm so proud of him as he makes sense of this reality in his beautiful little mind. They say that adversity makes people stronger and wiser, so by that adage our little Silas, and every comprehending child in Moore (which doesn't seem to include George, who has been unperturbed by all of this), will be wise beyond their years. A bright future awaits us!

Georgie Speaks

Hi! My name is George, but my family mainly calls me Georgie and I call myself Guggy. I'm adorable, and a giant ham, and I use this to my advantage with strangers whenever possible!

 

This here is called my "ninny." When my brother, whom I call "Da-Lice," was my age, he began calling his blanket his ninny, and I figure I'll do the same. Something I do that my brother doesn't, though, is cherish my little ninny tag. When my auntie Christa was a little girl she also was infatuated with her tag and she named it her "fa-fa." She rocks, so I'll do the same. Love my fa-fa...


Wait a second, guys! Something's going on! I hear a noise in the sky! What could that be?


 Aaahh, it's a helicopter, which I prefer to dub "ca-ca." Good thing we live right on the edge of the disaster path! These ca-ca's go over our house ALL THE TIME!


Okay, what were we saying? Oh yes---that I'm cute. Carry on...

May 20: The Good of It

I've said many times how much I love Oklahomans; I said it just a month ago in my post about the Memorial Marathon. And I've said how good I think people are in this post about human nature too. As a resident of Moore, who admittedly lost very little in terms of material possessions so I can't speak for someone who lost much more, my feelings of despair about the May 20th tornado have been tempered tremendously by the good feelings that have arisen from the caring people that I have seen and been amongst. Beginning with the moment my dad and I rounded the corner of our cul-de-sac and I saw my home for the first time after the tornado with a 24-pack of Aquafina waters and a box of contractor bags mysteriously plopped on my porch (with no note), I have come to realize all over again that people are in this to help each other...and I'm not just talking about Oklahomans.

License plates that I have seen driving around in my neighborhood and my park over the last two weeks include Texas, Kansas, Missouri, South Dakota, Minnesota, New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, South Carolina, New Mexico, North Carolina, Colorado, Louisiana, and California. This isn't normal, believe me! I saw people in these cars and trucks driving around all the time in the first week, and they weren't there to gawk. (By the way, on my soapbox, I understand that people are going to have an inclination to gawk. I have no problems with anyone coming and gawking in my neighborhood...as long as you are doing it while helping in some way!) Walking to and from the park while assisting with cleanup, I was offered drinks by people in pick-up trucks with hand-drawn signs such as "Colorado Springs 'Hearts' Moore" and "South Carolina is here to help!" This is like double-layering of volunteers here--volunteers helping volunteers! Even though I declined drinks from most of these people (I occasionally took a hot dog or bag of Famous Amos cookies though), my heart is warmed with love by each encounter.

The incident of people working together that I found to be the most personally overwhelming was on the morning of Saturday, May 25th in our park. One guy had organized a community initiative on Facebook to meet at the park at 9AM and clean it as best we could. I tell you this: the day before, my friend Heidi and I worked at the park for about two hours, picking up debris that averaged in size probably 2 feet by 1 foot and included all kinds of personal items. As Heidi worded it when we were done with our afternoon, she felt as though we had "skimmed the sand on a beach." The mess that was left was overwhelming. Well, on Saturday morning we moved our stuff back home since we had just gotten back electricity late the night before and we arrived at the park about an hour after start time. I was flabbergasted at the number of people that had shown up. My sister, brother-in-law, nephew, and mom all joined our family, and we put forth a conservative estimate of 500 volunteers in and around the park. They looked like ants crawling all over the place, scraping sidewalks, chainsawing fallen trees, picking dead turtles out of the creek (okay, that was my mom and me), bulldozing debris, and mostly just bending over time after time after time to pick up the tiny bits of debris that this grinder tornado had left in its wake. These pictures were taken with my phone and don't begin to do justice to the scene of volunteerism. Apart from the giant piles of debris spaced ten feet apart all around the edge of the park, this place is cleaner than before the tornado hit!

 

Maybe it's not really visible here, but there are probably a hundred people in this shot working in the homes closest to the park.

 Remember these pictures of the park, taken on Wednesday the 22nd?

Here's the same park, picture taken on Saturday the 25th. =)

Once everyone was done with the park, they picked their rakes, shovels, and work gloves up and stepped into the surrounding neighborhoods to assist those whose homes were demolished. 50 people would work all over one home, taking the rubble down to the curb and working until it was a clean-swept slab. I kid you not. And THEN, to top it off, out-of-state volunteers served EVERYONE a free, nice hot lunch at the park.

Let me say a little more about these out-of-state volunteers at the park. Impact areas in Moore have been zoned into different numbers, and our "zone" is at the front of our park. In this place, there were six-foot high stacks of waters, gatorades, food goodies, batteries, diapers, baby wipes, trash bags, work gloves, etc. The zone was manned and womanned from sun up to sun down with the giant grill always working, serving up hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken wings, and sandwiches to everyone who needed a bite, whether you were a volunteer, a person who lost your home, or just a person who was toughing it out at home with no water and no power. Each place had a medic, a cell phone charging station, and host of people from all over the place just there to help. They said, "Sit down! Can I get you a water? How about some hot dogs?" I swear, I cried at one point and hugged a woman who cheerfully served me food after Mowgli revolted during an afternoon's hard work. Our neighborhood's station was available all day long until just yesterday. That's a lot of hours!

To cap off Saturday, May 25th, we left the park and came home to find nearly the entirety of both of our families setting to work in our yard. All of the mess that BJ and I knew would take us days to clean was tackled; our moms and my brother-in-law picked up debris, my sister swept crud off the deck, my dad set up the power washer, BJ's dad cleaned the gutters, and we all knocked it out in three hours. Don't get me wrong; BJ and I weren't lazy asses this whole time. I actually worked so hard that I vomited, leading me to realize I probably better cool it a little; but what a feeling...all the help we got! I felt it then and I feel it everyday now---when I drive through other suburbs and see "Pray for Moore" signs, when ESPN sportscasters announce donations to Moore Disaster Relief, when friends from afar offer to help or offer a virtual hug, and when people contact me to tell me that my town and I are on their minds. From the bottom of this welling, emotional heart...thank you.

May 20: Day Of

Speaking from the heart, as I always do with this blog, I can admit to you that I haven't even known where to begin. When I step out of this lovely town that I was raised in and currently live in, and then tell people elsewhere that I live in Moore, I can see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices: "Oooh, you live in MOORE...." This is now followed by a barrage of questions, such as, "Were you impacted? Was your house damaged? Do you know people who lost their homes? Do you know people that died?" The answers to these questions, respectively, are yes; no; yes; no-but I know people whose friend or family member died. But the "yes" and "no" just can't even begin to sum it up. Most of us here have been wells of emotion, sometimes capable of talking for hours upon hours about the tornado last Monday, and sometimes not able to utter a word because we just don't know what to say. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm feeling. I know that we all have varying days here; Sunday, for instance, I remarked that I felt better than I had since the tornado actually hit, just to hear BJ reply, "Really? For some reason I feel worse today." I also know that we're all in it together, because that's how people in Moore are.

At times I have felt overcome by all of the terribleness that I have seen, and at times I have felt overwhelmed by all of the goodness that I have seen as well. Because I use this blog as a diary of sorts, I'm clearly going to use this as a forum for my own processing and observations, so feel free to read along or turn your attention elsewhere as you need. Breaking it down into chunks seems like the only way to surmount the insurmountable when it comes to all of the cleanup here, and I'm going to take a similar approach with my own account on this blog. Today I'll tell our story of the day of the tornado, May 20, 2013.

It wasn't a normal day for us. If it was a normal Monday, I would have been home with the boys. About 50 of 52 Mondays a year we aren't on a vacation somewhere, so Moore would have been our location. I certainly would have been at home because tornadoes were expected, and the local meteorologists had forewarned everyone to be in a safe place by 2PM. For us, that is at home because our next-door neighbors have an underground shelter and have generously volunteered us a guaranteed spot until we get our own shelter installed. As it was, BJ, the boys, and I were returning from a weekend vacation in Minnesota. We had left Heidi and Billy's house at 10:45AM and were planning to make it to Kansas City for the night. As we were approaching Ames, Iowa, a text rang in on my phone. I glanced down to my leg, where my phone was propped, and quickly read this text from BJ's mom: "Large tornado at 149th and May." I immediately tossed the phone to BJ and said, "Call your mom. Now." and repeated the text. 149th and May isn't exactly next door, but it's our side of town and way too close for comfort. BJ called Susan and began getting the scoop: it had just recently lowered, it was headed east-northeast into the metro, it was aiming for Moore. Beyond that, Susan couldn't say much because it was all so confusing as it was happening, and even the forecasters weren't sure which direction it was going at times. Frustrated, I picked up the phone and called my dad. Keep in mind, my dad spent an entire career in a law enforcement position; he was a rescue worker in the OKC bombing, he was in charge of recovery of bodies from the Eufaula bridge collapse, the guy has seen it all and he's always level-headed. He was level-headed when he answered the phone alright, but the tension in his voice was incredibly obvious as he was trying to make his way home to Moore without getting too close in on the storm. "Last I just heard it was just south of 4th and Santa Fe. Baby, it's headed down 4th street right for both of our houses." I took a measured breath in and said, "Okay." What else could I say? There was nothing to be done at that point. Dad promised to call as soon as he could.

I hung up with him and talked with BJ in the passenger seat. We shortly discussed the strong possibility that we were about to lose our home, that my parents were about to lose their home, and that we were both going to lose our dogs, who were at my parents' home. BJ reminded me that this was a best-case scenario for our families though: no one was home, so it couldn't hurt us. I didn't realize at the time that my sister had made her way into Moore to get my nephew, and that they were both on lock-down in his school. I tried to call my brother and sister but couldn't get through; phone lines were already jammed or blown down. So I called Sommer and said, "Congratulations, you just earned the best-friend role of talking to me until I hear from my family." Sommer lives in Massachusetts and had no idea what was going on until I told her. We talked for probably 15 minutes, me shaking the entire time (I'm actually shaking a bit uncontrollably as I type this), but gradually began settling down as I assumed we had lost our home, and certainly our neighborhood, and began accepting that possibility in my mind.

Calls from family members finally began trickling in. I learned from my brother that the tornado had been headed directly east, straight for our home, for about two miles before suddenly taking an abrupt turn to the north about a quarter of a mile from our house. I still wasn't sure what it meant for our house because the tornado was at least a half-mile wide at the time, but at least I could begin tracking it in my mind. He told us that it missed my parents' house to the north and that the dogs were fine. We learned later just how much they missed it by: 800 feet. He also shared the most important news, which was that my sister and nephew, who I didn't know had been potentially in harm's way, were a few miles north of where it crossed Bryant and were perfectly safe. And then right before my neighbor Julie's phone went down for good, I talked to her long enough to learn that our house had made it. She didn't know at the time how close it had come, but I could hear the shock in her voice that our houses were still standing. She described it as "intense" in the shelter: garage door shaking violently, what sounded like constant loud thunder coming from the ground, the drop in air pressure. It was close alright---missed us also by just 800 feet. Winds at our house had to have been over 100 mph. Our grill was damaged beyond repair, but nothing major was lost at our house. We knew our neighbors weren't so lucky, and they certainly weren't. A quick jaunt up our street and you'll find shattered windows and holes in roofs. Just a little further you see nothing but slabs with heaps of rubble on top, no walls standing. The northern half of the park just alongside our neighborhood is in smithereens. The playground had become a mangled mess of automobiles, houses, sheet metal, bicycles, laundry baskets, tires, trees, dolls, boards, chunks of pavement, children's motorized vehicles, and everything else under the sun. The trees were gone, the picnic pavilion was gone, it was just gone gone gone. BJ and I didn't know the scope of it for the next couple of hours. As we pulled into Kansas City I got a picture text of our park showing the state of it, and I knew for sure it was bad. I already knew it was going to be bad though; not only have I lived through an F5 tornado in Moore before, but I had also heard from about 15 loving and concerned friends and family members on the phone that it was "BAD." "Jenny," they said, "prepare yourself. This is really, really bad." Finally I unloaded on someone, I can't remember who, and cried in exasperation, "I get it! I know it's bad! It's bad! I get it! It's bad! This isn't doing me any good!" Add in missing children and a rising death toll, and it was all we could do to not come unraveled on the road.

We checked into the hotel that night and the clerk at the Comfort Inn had the lobby television on CNN, which of course was covering Moore. This was my first chance to see images, and I told the clerk that my neighborhood had been destroyed. Someone else overheard and soon they were both asking me questions as though I had been there; I told them what I knew and that we were just trying to get home. In bed that night, I didn't fall asleep until after 2AM. All I could think about were awful imagined scenarios in which I was trying to beat out the tornado, but I couldn't get both kids into the shelter in time and lost one of them. That was the first of several nights that I avoided bedtime because I couldn't help but lie there awake, horrified by the productions of my own mind. Ten days later I've mostly stopped doing that, but it replays all night long in my dreams. Literally, all night long I dream of tornadoes, picking through debris, coming out of rubble, outrunning a storm. It won't always be like this, but I need to keep figuring it out from here...

Tornado Update and Pictures

I'm tired and headed to bed soon, but wanted to post some pics that I took today of our home, neighborhood, and adjacent park. All of these places are within easy walking distance of our house, like an eighth to about a quarter of a mile. Lots of recovery and rebuilding ahead, but I can't tell you how encouraged I already feel by what we saw today. People are in good spirits, and we even saw residents of the most ravaged street in our area all joining together for grilled burgers on a lunch break in the middle of their street!

Basically, the update is that we were able to get to our home today to get some things. We have water now but no power still, so we are continuing to stay elsewhere. Soon we'll be moving back and readjusting to our new environment. There are absolutely no structural problems with our house. Hours of cleanup is ahead for us, but we are only out a grill, a bird feeder, and the contents of our refrigerator. We are so lucky. Silas is handling it beautifully, conceptualizing it as a big storm that caused many "broken" things and "boo boos," and he is already excited to watch the clean-up process. The construction vehicles are everywhere, and he loudly has stated, "That excavator is helping to clean the play place!" As a family we decided to spend some time in the park this weekend on a clean-up mission, doing our part to heal a park that we have so grown to love.

Thank you all a million times for your love and support. The promised pictures:

The playground at our park

Look closely: nearly the entire house is gone, but the mugs and plates are still calmly placed on their shelves in the cabinet.

 Yep, that's a guard rail hanging from that power line.

One of the debris piles in our creek.

Debates are going in our family...is that a surfboard or a giant chain saw blade sticking out of that house?

And here are a couple of shots of our deck and patio. Covered in muck and debris, but nothing that a little elbow grease won't erase!