Last night was our first round of tornadic activity in the Midwest. At first, I was just pissed because I had to watch the local weathermen make programming decisions and missed both Grey's Anatomy and Lost. Around 9-something, the sirens went off, and I scooped up the sleeping little angel in one arm and Bella the Cat in the other and headed to the basement to find Beloved, who was excitedly imparting the news to his brother.
As we sat on the cat-hair-invested futon downstairs and watched the lightning through the one basement window, I thought how preferable the basement of Chateau Travolta is to the one in This Old House. Our current basement has a working bathroom, a futon, and a discernible lack of mold and water. I could feasibly stay down there for some time. As it turned out, we were only down there for about twenty minutes. All told, a successful tornado warning.
When I was growing up, our basement was finished, and really it was the first level of my house. My parents' house, built by my parents and relatives, is what one would now call "green." It's built into the side of a hill, it has cathedral windows that act as solar panels of sorts, and it faces the right direction to make the most of morning and evening light. Now it's heated with corn via an intricate system of copper pipes and a scary-looking boiler outside in a little shed. My father is less environmental than cheap, but the effects are the same. My parents' house is built on the site of a house destroyed by a tornado, under the thinking the odds were fairly good another house in the exact same location wouldn't be taken again. My life, in some ways, has been shaped by tornadoes, or the fear of them.
I remember sitting in the back hall of my parents' house, huddled under blankets with Blondie and Ma while Pa foolishly stood in front of a wall of windows or even went outside to check out the storm. I was always certain he would be whisked away like the Wicked Witch of the East. We had a little weather radio then, and later, in the '80s, a WatchMan, which was a tiny TV with a one-inch screen and a big antennae. The weathermen had fewer cool graphics but an equal fetish for wall clouds.
Some coastal dwellers express horror of tornadoes, but they've always been my favorite of the Acts of God. If you're in the path of a hurricane or tsunami, you're equally fucked. But if you're in the path of a tornado, you have about a 50/50 chance of either being the house completely demolished or the house next door to it, lawn ornaments and wind chimes intact. Tornadoes are fickle beasts, and I've always appreciated them for that. You just never know where they're going to land, and you might emerge scot-free.
I have a feeling as the weather patterns grow stronger, we'll be spending a lot of summer evenings in the basement of Chateau Travolta. Last night as I held my sleeping daughter, I realized I have to make peace with the idea of losing all my material goods, as it could happen at any time, and for the first time in my life, I thought I could probably deal with it as long as my family was safe. It was kind of freeing.
Thank goodness we didn't. But Surrender, Dorothy.
