weather

I’ve been totally enjoying our week of 80 degree weather and sunshine here in the midwest. A wonderful week. Lots of time spent just thinking out on my walks. I’ve been thinking weather thoughts, and what photo to use for our Photo of the Month contest this month. After we finally decided the theme was weather. Weather is funny. It can change lives in an instant. A hurricane can wipe out a town. An earthquake can tumble bridges and buildings and homes. A tornado can spring out of control, dancing through a town picking and choosing what buildings and lives it will destroy.

Back in April 2006 a tornado ripped through the town of Caruthersville, Missouri. The town my mom grew up in, and my grandmother lived in until she died at 96 years of age. Her home was such a constant in the years I was growing up. Lots of visits. Fried chicken, fried catfish, games of Rook or Canasta. Gathering up pecans from the trees in her backyard and bringing them in and using the nutcracker to split them, then pulling out the meat. When I was really young, cotton fields stretched out behind her house. I learned to sew there. Climbed into feather beds with chenille bedspreads and slept beneath the sloping roofs of the upstairs bedrooms. So many wonderful memories tied to that house, that home.

I find it so heartbreaking that this home is gone. A child should be laughing in the backyard, picking up those pecans, trudging up to bed to sleep under those wonderful slanted roofs. I feel a bit guilty feeling such sadness…how much more heartbreaking is it for whomever lived in it in April 2006?

In March of 2006 we were headed back from vacation in Gulf Shores and passed by the town. I wanted to stop and get a picture of all the boys in front of my grandmother’s house. I thought my mom would really enjoy that. But quite a few of the boys were sleeping, so I thought “next time.”

Though there won’t be a next time, because this is all that is left of my grandmother’s home, whoever lived in it in 2006.

Shockingly bright blue skies mocking an empty lot. Mrs. Meredith’s house made it. See it there on the left? One story and brick. I’m glad that this happened long after my grandmother passed away. What if the tornado would have come through in her later years? Where she needed help to get around and use a walker? How much warning did they have to get to safety? She couldn’t have made it into her cellar. Couldn’t have climbed down the stairs. Would someone have come over and gotten her and carried her to safety?

I found this video on YouTube of scenes of the tornado and the destruction afterwards. Very, very sad. The first scenes of the actual tornado are frightening.

Weather is a strange thing. It can uplift our moods by bringing us a warm, sunshiny day. It can soothe us with gentle rain on a sleepy afternoon. But it can take away a life, a home, a whole town. Yes, weather is a freaky thing.