I have lived here my entire life, and I guess I've learned enough about our crazy Texas weather to know that the weather outside early yesterday evening was menacing. It looked like a windy spring day. But when you walked outside there was just something weird about the way the wind was blowing and the color of the sky that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The boys and I had eaten dinner while listening to distant thunder, and I thought, "here we go again." But by the time we finished and headed outside, the sun was shining so I thought it had all missed us.
After we'd been outside about 15 minutes, it clouded over again, and that weird wind started up again. I looked up, and even though the sun was still shining all around us, I saw there was a wall cloud directly over us, just like the ones they talk when tracking tornados. The hair on the back of my neck stood up again, and I grabbed Joel and told Gabriel to get inside so we could check the radar. He did not pay any attention to me and ran away from me when I went to grab him. Sigh. I left him outside (we were in the backyard) and went to check the radar.
A tornado had just touched down east of Springtown, but it looked like the whole storm was north of us and was going to miss us. I texted my brother in Weatherford to make sure they were ok. He replied that all they got was a little rain. I relaxed a little and gave the boys their bath. Sometime during the bath I heard my phone ring with Jav's ring, but I had left it in the kitchen. I just assumed he was calling to say he was on his way home. All through the bath we would all of sudden hear the crazy wind pick up outside. Then the home phone started ringing. As soon as I got them dried off I saw my sister-in-law had called. I called her back and she said there were now three cells they were watching, the original one up north, one headed towards her in Mansfield, and one headed towards us. Her boyfriend lives in Euless and was in the closet with his two girls with sirens going off, because that big northern cell kept spinning and ending up more south than they were predicting. Slight panic returns.
Then Jav called and let me in on the news that he was still at work with golfball sized hail and sirens going off. My first reaction was thinking not very nice words. But then I came to my senses and was glad he was in a safe place instead of driving in all of this. I finished getting the boys ready for bed and checked the radar before getting Joel to bed, which takes about 20 minutes. Then I left Gabriel on our bed watching cartoons. While I was rocking Joel my phone started ringing. It's set on Pinball Machine for unknown numbers. And it kept ding ding ding dinging. Then again. The third call (from Jav at work) I answered and he said that rotational clouds had been spotted at an intersection about 5 minutes from us, according to one of the local newscasts. He assumed the sirens would be going off, but no, all you could hear was rain and that crazy wind.
I finished getting Joel down and went to check the weather. Right about the same time the satellite went out, the sirens started going off. Well, here we go again, super-sized. I was really trying not to totally lose it with panic for Gabriel's sake. I told him to get into the bathroom and stay there, and that some strange things were going to happen because there might be a tornado coming and we needed to stay safe. I grabbed Bones, stuffed him into a cat carrier and put him in the bathroom. I couldn't find Zoe, so didn't waste any more time looking for her. Right then the hail started. Big hail. I had just learned the day before that hail meant a tornado might follow. I never knew that before. This is about when my adrenaline kicked up so high I stop remembering things clearly. I went to get Gabriel's twin mattress and got it into the bathroom really quickly. I got Joel out of bed, dragged Molly into the bathroom (she did NOT want to go in there) and closed the door. Once we were sitting on the edge of the tub I tried to hear if the sirens were still going off over Gabriel's nonstop questions, Joel's whining and Bones's yeowling. They were. Crap! Crap! Crap!
I think I also stopped worrying about whether I was freaking Gabriel out or not, because I was freaking out. I called Jav and told him we were in the tub, sirens going off and big hail falling out of the sky. So now he's freaking out. I wondered if maybe the sirens were going off due to the hail or had a tornado been spotted? Jav said he would call his sister (I guess they had no satellite either), and call me back. I finally had a moment to focus on what Gabriel had been asking me. He had been asking over and over again if everything would be different outside if a tornado came? I wasn't sure what he meant and didn't really answer at first. He said, "Mommy, just like Dorothy, after her house goes through the tornado, when she opens the door and everything looks different? Would that happen to us?"
Why, oh why did I have to use the word "tornado?" Why, oh why, did MGM have to make a movie that makes it seem like a tornado would be a fun thing to go through? I told him I would have to explain more to him tomorrow. I texted my brother to tell him what was happening. Jav called back and said that there was no worry about tornado in our area, just hail. He was going to try to make it home. I told him to please be careful, because people were still posting on Facebook that they were having a third round of sirens and hail. The scary thing about this storm is that it seemed like one minute everything would be quiet, and the next minute a big storm would drop out of the sky.
I let the (by then) totally PO'd cat out of the carrier, the totally confused dog out of the bathroom, tried to calm down the totally wired Gabriel, and went to put the totally tired little Joel back to bed. He, of course, started screaming. I tried to comfort him a little, and turned on his turtle. Then I tuned him out. I attempted to move Gabriel's mattress back down the hallway and for the life of me couldn't figure out how I had moved it so easily in there. It took me forever to get it back on his bed! I read him one book and sang him one song. He thought the whole night was a really fun adventure and conked out pretty quickly. I called my Mom to check on she and Dad. The weather outside was still windy and rainy. I remembered to text my brother to let him know that we were out of the tub and it looked like we'd had ping pong ball-sized hail. There's still a bunch of debris (mostly tufts of leaves from the trees) all over the yard. Jav finally made it home and I was SOOOOOOOO happy he made it safe and that he was home. More texts and phone calls to let everyone he was home. What in the world did we do before all of this technology? Nothing much until the next morning, I guess, except pray that all of our loved ones were safe.
So today, there were still a few leftover concerns. What to tell Gabriel about tornados without scaring him half to death. Which city official to complain to about our shabby alarm system on the Eastside. And of course, a big shout out and thank you to God (or Mother Nature?, or, insert higher power of your choice) for keeping us safe, and leaving me with this story to retell.
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