The Happy Homemaker

Maybe it is global warming or just weird luck, but everywhere I move, even if it is for a few months, I have to endure the threat of tornado warnings. I always take such warnings seriously.
The only places in my entire life where I didn’t have to worry about tornadoes were New York City, Korea, and Hawaii. I still believe Hawaii has the best weather of any place I have ever lived. I never saw lightning all the three years I lived there. Seoul had terrible storms, but I never heard of any tornadoes. I remember the thunder would echo loudly through the city. One night the thunder woke me up and I ran through my Korean house waking up my Korean father saying, “North Korea is attacking! North Korea is attacking!” to which he replied, “Go back to sleep!” I was more concerned about snow and terrorist attacks in New York than I was of tornadoes. One night while I was jogging through Queens I got harassed by drunks and had to hide in a laundromat. I had different things to fear in New York.

Living in the South is preferred but you must live with the fear of terrible storms and tornadoes. Everywhere I have lived in the South has had a terrible warning most often followed by a tornado that smashed records as well as lives. In 1996, while I was at school in Hawaii, a tornado ripped through my family’s neighborhood. I found out about it on the news when in Hawaii I saw a picture of my neighborhood on national television. I was terrified that I could not reach my family for several days. I finally got a hold of my grandmother Lee who lived nearby and who told me that all was well. In Florida, I lived through two tornadoes. I lived there in 1998 while working on an internship at Disney World. A huge F5 tornado hit one night 15 minutes to the south of where I lived. Over 50 were killed. I was outside at Pleasure Island at their nightly New Year’s Party at the time. The next morning you could feel the sorrow in the air. Later that year I saw a tornado off to the distance while walking to my break room. I now worked at a restaurant at Pleasure Island. It was a small tornado, but damaged a nearby hotel. That was the only time I got a real break from work.

In just this year, I have been followed by countless tornado warnings. In Louisville, I had to cancel my visiting teaching appointment because of a tornado warning. A small tornado passed through the north of town near where I live. It only hit one home, it happened to be a newly built home and the owners were just moving in. In Nashville we had repeated tornado warnings. One night I was in my room sick with the flu. I was talking to Daddy on the phone because I was so scared. I heard an explosion off in the distance and my apartment shook, the lights flickered on and off. I wondered if a tornado was coming but I couldn’t tell because neither my computer nor my cable worked. I found out later that further north about 30-50 miles a deadly F5 tornado hit and caused a major explosion. It ripped up brick houses. I am not sure of how far it was away because I am going by the mileage from Nashville and I lived in Hermitage, near Mt. Juliet. The news interviewed people from Mt. Juliet who said they heard the explosion from their home. Many were killed.

Now I live in Northern Virginia near DC. There was a severe thunderstorm warning right around when my daughter had to get out of school. There was no rain at 3 o’clock and she got out at 3:15 so I decided to walk. I kept forgetting things or I couldn’t find things so I didn’t leave and at exactly 3:05 the storm hit. I went to my neighbor’s house and asked what the school’s policy was for dismissal during bad weather when her son told me there was a tornado warning. I ran home and rushed the boys into the basement worried the whole time about Victoria. By 3:15 the storm was gone. My neighbor and I drove to the school to get our daughters. We had trouble driving to the school because there were trees knocked down all over the place. I shivered with the thought that if I had left at 3:00 I would have been at 3:05 where the trees had fallen. There was someone in another county that was killed by a fallen tree so it is possible. The school dismissed the children at 3:30. Victoria was shaken as tornadoes terrify her. The teacher told me that she panicked.

The worst of the storm was over but the threat was not. We spent the rest of the night in the basement glued to the weather. There was another tornado warning but it came to nothing.

I thanked God for our safety and hope that we will continue to be blessed the next time we see a pink and green glow in the sky warning of deadly storms.