an old memory

 From Mother's Day, 2017:

My children in a nutshell: Jonah made me 3 different Mother's Day cards. Caroline gave me a hug and a kiss. Miriam ate the Mother's Day treat she made for me at church.

 

10 years

At some point in the afternoon, Josh called and suggested Jonah and I come to campus. Thanks to the heads up from Noel, I had grabbed our bag of snacks and toys and was mentally prepared to leave the house (my fellow introverts will know this is serious business). I must not have been completely convinced we were going to need to hunker down, though, because I was waiting for bread to come out of the oven when Josh called. I just turned off the oven and walked away, figuring maybe it would finish cooking as the oven cooled.

We drove to campus like we had two weeks before, but this time, three things were noticeably different:

1. It wasn't raining. Something about showing up earlier in pouring rain helped it feel stormy. On the 27th, it felt more or less like a normal spring day.

2. I parked in the staff parking lot this time.

3. The basement was full of people. Last time, there had been a few students and staff members riding out the storm warning with us. This time, it was a crowd. Jonah was not even the only child there, which certainly made things feel a little more serious.

While the storm headed towards Tuscaloosa, we watched James Spann's weather report on the projector. Jonah watched Finding Nemo. The power (and therefore, wifi) cut out right as James Spann said something about "approaching the mall" or something similar. Since we lived more or less across the street from the mall, we had a pretty good idea that there would be some damage in our neighborhood, but that's all we knew. The power/internet never did come back on, so we all just...waited. Remember that this was a whole line of storms, so even after "our' tornado passed over town, we weren't sure it would be entirely safe to leave just yet.

At some point sometime later, Josh left. Thinking back now, I'm sure he or someone else was checking updates on their phones or had found a radio broadcast somehow, but I was busy taking care of Jonah. I remember people slowly leaving and not coming back, so it seemed like our time in the underground bunker was over, but Josh wanted to go check things out first. I remember being a little frustrated (worried?) that he was gone for a long time. I didn't know where we were supposed to go to find him, so we just waited. Turns out, he was gone for such a long time because he was busy returning calls (or trying to) because when he emerged from the basement, his phone blew up with messages. When he called our home teacher to check in, Dan didn't answer (He was going through his own tornado emergency at the time), so Josh called the bishop. Sis. Wyatt answered and told Josh the the bishop was actually out looking for us. If that's not love, I don't know what is.

When Josh came back downstairs, we loaded up and started driving home. We made it as far as the parking lot across the street from the hospital* before a police officer stopped us and told us no vehicular traffic was allowed past that point. We were maybe a half mile from our house, so we parked and started on foot. Josh carried Jonah and off we went down the hill. As we got close to the house, we started to jog. I don't know why exactly, other than we just couldn't walk anymore.

It took us a few minutes to figure out exactly which house was ours. It's somewhat surprising how difficult it is to tell when one neighbor's house is nothing but a foundation and our house was missing parts. Without a porch and a back room, it didn't look like the same house. As we stood on the corner and counted houses to figure out which house belonged to us, Aly and Aaron (friends from the dinner party a few weeks before) were standing on our lawn.

If I remember correctly, they were on their way to return a laptop to a friend without realizing just how severe the damage was. It became readily apparent that they would not be making it to return the laptop when they were also stopped by police. Parked at a shopping center across the street, trying to figure out whether to go back home, they ran into Bishop Wyatt. They told him they knew where our house** was, so they came to find us while he went on looking for more of his lost sheep.

A police officer was going through the neighborhood telling people there was a possible gas leak and we needed to leave, so we took one quick run through the house, grabbed our 72-hour kit (which yes, we should have taken with us originally), and headed home with Aaron and Aly. Well, Jonah and I went home with Aly while Josh and Aaron went looking for ways to help.

Next time, I'll write about what Jonah and I did that night as well as what Josh did (as best as I remember it). But for now in the story, we've been scooped up off our lawn and taken to the Richards residence for the night (and what would become many months).

*There are so many incredible stories about what happened that day, including the miracle that the tornado didn't hit the hospital.

**Not only had they been to our home before, but Ally also remembered our conversation about where the best place would be to ride out a storm.