Eyes Opened Wide

For each new morning with its light,

For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I was 18, it never occurred to me I'd be old. That some day my skin might become mottled with tiny moles or that I'd have white hairs on my chin.

I drove in snow storms without fear, did worm turns with loose abandon as I skied down a steep mountain, and never gave much thought to the fragility of life.

Cut to present day. Remember the movie Apollo 13, when everyone waited over three minutes for that small space capsule to make it through the fiery re-entry into the earth's atmosphere? I liken it to a few weeks ago and the twenty minutes I sat with anxious abandon while a tornado engulfed Tuscaloosa, Alabama - my youngest son in its path.

My son had called a few moments before, to tell me a tornado was five minutes away from his university. Hide. That was all that went through my mind while I told him to get to a stairwell. I don't believe he thought like me as the excitement in his voice didn't reflect fear. The line went dead, the ugly bleat of an endless busy signal replacing his voice as I tried to get him back.

A quick turn to the Weather Channel provided a radar view of the hook of the storm, the announcers saying in quiet voices that the immense, powerful storm was at that moment overtaking the city of Tuscaloosa and the University of Alabama. They added, we can only pray for these people. Silence.

I prayed.

Twenty minutes later, my phone rang. Youngest son saying it took him a while to get through. That he saw the tornado out his window. "You saw it?" I cried. "You weren't hiding?"

"You have a chance to see that? Wouldn't you?" he said.

No, I thought. Not at my age. I would have my head between my legs, kissing my ass goodbye.

There lies the power of youth verses the knowledge (or cynicism) of age. Settled by the sound of his voice, I used my mother voice to instruct him not to go outside, that first reports indicated total disaster. Danger.

"Okay, mom."

Mothers of three sons know what that means. And in my youth, I would have done the same. To take that walk and see the downed trees, the broken windows. That's what my son saw before he walked over the next hill and saw this.

Just like that, the excitement of the storm replaced with the aimless wandering of those lost and still alive amid the devastation. With eyes wide open, the endless scenes now slammed into his mind like the tornado that invaded in his very own backyard.

Students able to get home were told to do so. Two nights later when my son came through the garage door after a twelve hour drive, I saw a youthful spirit dulled by the reality of the previous 48 hours. The invincibility of youth now tinged with vulnerability. The buzz of the rightafter muddied by the lack of power, food, water and lost faces.

He stared at the TV and computer screens that repeated the videos of the storm and its aftermath he'd not been privy to before. This bothered him even more. That even though he had been present, just two blocks from the fringe of the massive destruction, the "seeing" on the screen wrought an even wider opening of his eyes.

"Tell me what you're thinking," I asked a few days later.

"It won't be fixed by the time I graduate," he said.

No, some of it will never be fixed. And I think it might take some time for his thoughts to collect and settle.

There are many in Tuscaloosa, Joplin, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Massachusetts and throughout the US that are not as fortunate to have their son home safely. As the rebuilding, resettling, and the search for a new norm begins, please remember those that will never be fixed completely.

http://alabamapossible.org/2011/04/tornado-relief-how-you-can-help/

ttp://blog.salvationarmyusa.org/?p=6136

http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_southern_tornadoes

http://yourlife.usatoday.com/mind-soul/doing-good/kindness/post/2011/05/how-to-help-victims-of-the-missouri-tornado/171501/1