Close Calls and Cruise Ship Directors!

This post comes at the request of my fellow blog goddesses who asked that I relate how I stayed “calm, cool, and collected” during a close call with tornadoes last weekend in my hometown of Skiatook, Oklahoma. Well I hate to disappoint, but there was hardly any “cool” and definitely no “calm”– but there was definitely a facade of collection, if only to keep my 18 month old from picking up on my internal panic.

You see, I am a pretty blasé, carefree person, but I have always been terrified of tornadoes. I have no idea where it came from– perhaps from when I was 11 and a tornado took out over 60 homes in my small town, or maybe from the movie Twister, or from the “Wicked Weather” shows our local meteorologist presented. I have no clue. I just know that where I come from in Oklahoma, a simple gorgeous rain storm can suddenly become deadly with a rush and a roar. In minutes. In seconds. And to me, it’s not funny, and it’s not something to scoff at. The “it could never happen to my” hubris is what finds people injured or dead. In minutes. In seconds.

So it still blows my mind that I happened to fly to Skiatook (alone, with V, but quite successfully thanks to Vanessa’s helpful post on flying with toddlers!!) on the one weekend when an outbreak of tornadoes ravaged the countryside. Storms had been threatening since Friday, giving my family plenty of time to get in a few jokes about my nerves before the rains finally began on Saturday night. Before I went to bed on Saturday night, I downloaded an app called IMap Weather Radio. I woke up a few times during the night to check it while the storms raged outside, and was then awakened by a loud beep around 5:45 am telling me that a tornado warning had been issued for my area. I hit the button, and it told me that a tornado had been spotted 5 miles southeast of Skiatook moving northwest at 60 mph. I didn’t have time to do the math, but knew my worst nightmare was coming true. I rushed downstairs to see if anyone was awake, and found my stepdad (the town coordinator) watching the news and making the call to sound the town sirens seconds before the local meteorologist told anyone in Skiatook to take cover NOW. It all happened so fast, and before I knew it I was upstairs ripping my little one out of bed (she was sleeping like an angel through some nasty hail!) and bolting to the cellar while chatting with her like nothing was wrong.

Well obviously we survived, and it’s easy afterwards to laugh at yourself for how silly you were panicking, but at the same time replay the incident a million times and feel

guilt over possibly taking too long to get your kiddo to the cellar (did I really need to grab a jacket?). That guilt is only exacerbated when the most recent reports say that an F1 (from the same storm system that killed 5 in Woodward, OK) touched down at our municipal airport (literally across the pasture from us) at around 5:50 am. Were we in the cellar by then? Or was I still grabbing my jacket? Did it pass right over us? (Reports indicate it did).

Let me return to the cruise ship director analogy where we started. When we were in the cellar I was able to continue a looooooong tradition in my family of drawing on the walls of the cellar. With a blue permanent marker, I marked the walls with a bold “Victoria was here, April 15, 2012” as she colored on the wall beside me in her Papa’s arms. Afterwards, I realized I wrote her name right above a finger-painted “Jessica” from God-only-knows-when, and next to a red painted “Jess ’91” that I know is from when the tornado took out half my town. And suddently I wondered when my mom had come up with the idea to let kids distract themselves with graffiti, making something fun out of a terrifying situation where you just don’t know what is going on outside the cellar door. The names that dot the walls of the cellar are our own names but also those of our friends . . . Johnna, Holly, Smokey . . . Kids who were away from their own parents when the worst came so close. And somehow my mom had made something fun out of it– the ultimate cruise ship director.

Ah, just one more reason to love Austin . . .  NO TORNADOES!!

So have you been in an emergency situation with your kiddo? How did you keep them calm or distracted??