bring out your dead

I’m not dead!

For those of you unfamiliar with Monty Python, a scene from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

I haven’t been online much in the past month. Well, blogging anyway. Moving back to my parents’ has been interesting. My two year old son takes up every bit of oxygen and energy when he’s conscious, so my parents and I haven’t really had much of a chance to get in each other’s hair. My son is very active and very curious. He can’t just leave well enough alone when he’s told, so he has to be watched every second. When he isn’t under sharp supervision, he wanders off or he gets into dangerous/ destructive circumstances. Oh, the child. Most of the time he wants 100% attention anyway, so simply watching him won’t do. He makes me smile, that rotten little boy.

Time has slipped away so quickly. I’ve spent so much time dallying that I’m ashamed to admit how little I’ve done in the way of searching for new employment.

There was a tornado in the neighborhood just before sunrise on Mother’s Day. Two times in my life I’ve been so scared that my body shook uncontrollably. The first was when I was being rolled down a hospital corridor to have a C-section and all the cords had been unplugged and I couldn’t hear my baby’s heartbeat and I was scared for both our lives. The second was the morning of Mother’s Day this year when the wind was so loud and the only other thing we could hear were the loud cracks and enormous thuds of trees. Mom and Dad were awakened upstairs by the falling of limbs onto the roof. They quickly grabbed the baby and brought him to the basement (he had gone to sleep upstairs the night before). We emptied a safe closet of spare luggage and huddled in fear; listening to the wind made every second feel like an eternity. Mom told me to run to my room and get shoes and something to go over my gown. I stood with the flash light for a moment and stared at the window, listening to the wind howl. My knees and legs were trembling. I forced myself to go into the bedroom, but I couldn’t make my mind focus on grabbing anything, so I ran back to the safe closet with nothing but the light. The worst of the wind lasted only a few minutes. My son was still disoriented from being abruptly awakened, and he was scared because of the palpable fear emanating from the three adults; he stayed in my mother’s arms without complaint. How long we stayed near the closet after the wind died down, I do not know. We were frightened that the tornado might come back. Times like those are what make me realize how very precious life is.

As dawn approached we disbanded into our corners of the house, dressing for the day, preparing for what we knew would be a long one. I peaked out the window on what used to be a lovely thick horizon of trees at the far end of the back yard. Only a few tall trees were silhouetted against the dark gray sky. A new cherry tree, which we planted only the day before had been blown to perfect diagonal in its muddy spot. As the light grew stronger, the scenery grew increasingly grotesque as more and more of the aftermath became visible.

Nature is awesome and stunning. Thankfully, the house and the cars were untouched, but several large trees in the yard were either snapped like twigs midway up their trunks or had been completely uprooted in the wind. All of the day was spent recovering as best we could. Other home owners in the neighborhood were not so fortunate. We learned that a married couple just a few houses down were barely out of their bed during the tornado when a tree landed in the middle of their bedroom. We think our houses and our lives are untouchable until something like this comes along. We have been very blessed to have very good friends and members of my parents’ church come to help with all the trees in the back yard.  It has been amazing to see how people have come together to help each other in this disaster.

All this to say: there has been quite a bit of upheaval and complete disarray keeping me from updating the blog in recent weeks. Things will settle down eventually, but not any time in the near future, I think.