Tornado

There were tornado sirens today.

This was our third experience since living here.  The first was just a test.  The second happened at bedtime a couple of weeks ago, when Dave was at work and I was home alone with the girls, and because the first time had been a test, I forgot what I was supposed to do.  I didn't take the girls to the basement, instead I insisted that they try to sleep, despite the noise.  I recognize this is not the best parenting moment I have had.

So this afternoon, when the sirens wailed, I brought everyone to the basement.  The girls played dress up, swung on the swing, climbed the rope, slid down the slide, practiced the monkey bars.  Dave was thrilled to have me captive, where he could get a round of ping pong out of me without protest.  We listened to NPR for updates, and the funnel clouds seemed far away, the damage farther.

Tonight, on facebook, I saw images of the damage in North Minneapolis, in the neighborhood where the girls go to school, and where most of their classmates live.  Huge old trees, uprooted, thrown down across cars.  Roofs torn off.

The day after the last siren, the one I did not heed, I met a new friend in the park for a playdate.  She told me the sirens went off just after her two girls fell asleep, and that, also home alone, she could not wrap her head around the logistics of waking a 3 year old and an infant and carrying them to the basement, so she didn't.  I told her how I had outright ignored it, even with waking children, how it didn't seem possible, somehow, for the tornado to enter the city.

How foolish.

She told me she had felt that way once, too, until a funnel cloud touched down on her street, ran past her old house.

I am glad we have a basement.
I will be checking the details of our homeowners insurance.
I will be praying for our neighbors in North who suffered damage from this tornado.

I will heed the sirens.