Sad Day in the South

Yesterday, I let my youngest talk me into driving over the bay to a town close to Enterprise, Alabama. We were going to get our ears stapled for weight loss. An important thing to risk our lives for, huh? We watched TV and as the sun peeked its shiny face through the clouds, we thought, "Ok, we have a break in the weather," and we hit the road, unwisely not calling my oldest daughter to see what it was like on her end. I noticed it was hard to keep the car on the road. My oldest daughter called after we had been on the road a while, warning us of tornados. We were then getting an every 20 minute report from friends by phone of bad storms overtaking us. As we crossed a big beautiful expanse of water, the water looked wild and brown, and the brown melted into the brown sky. Having lived in Iowa once where the sky would turn brown and one could watch the tornados fly through the sky, I thought "Uh, oh, this is not good." The radio said if it hit on the bridge, to get out of the car. Yeh, right. Then, as we entered town, my oldest daughter called again, and said that a tornado was spotted (in the air, thank God) and would be on the very street we were driving on. Of course, once those things are in the air, they do have a likelihood of hitting the ground and who knows what else. We tuned in the radio and it was advising taking shelter immediately. Youngest daughter breaks out the Zanax, gulps some down and offers me some. "No thanks, I need to have my wits about me, and if I go, I want to take pictures in focus." (Actually I was afraid it would relax my bladder.) Despite her fear, she giggles. Panic stricken, and having had way too much diet coke on the way over, I drove into a service station. My cousin called to chat. In panic (and desperation for a restroom) I tell her I'll call her back and hang up on her. Then, we were told that they did not have a bathroom. Ooops! Wrong place to take shelter. Back into the car and back on danger road, with older daughter hysterically calling ever 5 minutes. We made it to the ear stapling shop and bathroom, soaking wet from the horizontally driven rain. A man in the shop told us that he was on the edge of one of the tornados which caught his car and spun him like a carnival ride. He thought he was going to be lifted and that would be it.
Stapling completed, we went to visit my daughter and learned that the tornado that touched down in Enterprise, killed eight students at the high school. This morning the newscasters were there with cameras showing the devastation. It was so terribly sad. As parents, if we had a choice, we would much rather die than see our children go too soon. These tragedies can't be explained ever. They just are. It could have been us. Even sitting in our home, we could have been in as much danger. We had a tornado hit our home in 2000 and cause $30,000 worth of damage. Youngest daughter was there alone. We never know when. (Sorry, Blogger would not allow paragraphs today).