A Scary Storm

Around 2:30 p.m. today, June 7, I was home with just my 3-yr-old granddaughter who was inside taking a nap. I was outside pulling weeds. A storm started brewing. Thunder could be heard in the distance, the wind started picking up, the clouds rolled in and the sky looked dark- very dark. I thought I should head into the house and I gradually started for the door; on the way taking time to pick one last weed and then another last weed and then another. You know how it goes. I headed for the door as a squirrel scampered off into a tree to hunker down. As I got closer to the door big raindrops started to fall and the wind from the south picked up. By the time I got into the house it was raining sideways and the wind was roaring- really roaring. I headed for the south windows of the house to close them. I knew the rain would be pouring in. I ran down another level and closed those south windows. And the rain was pouring in and the wind was roaring even louder. And I was getting scared. Not much scares me. I couldn't see outside because of the wind and rain. My husband had left to pick up my son from work and thoughts of them on the road in the storm entered my head and I worried about them. Worrying alleviates somewhat being scared. Meanwhile I ran back upstairs, briefly checked other windows, picked up my granddaughter from the bed and ran down two flights of stairs to the basement. Mind you, she was light as a feather, but normally I can barely lift her 50.4 pounds onto a chair or into a swing. Being scared does strange things to your adrenaline levels. We sat hugging each other on the stairs and waited for the winds to die down and worried about daddy and grandpa so we didn't have to worry so much about ourselves. Sometime in there the electricity went out. I'm not sure how long we waited on the basement stairs for the winds to die down or at least to quit roaring, but it seemed an eternity. In reality I suppose it was only 5 or 10 minutes. Around 3:05 p.m. my husband and son arrived home. They had been a 1/2 hr away and had no idea what had happened to us until they got home and saw all the downed trees. Lots of downed trees. A mulberry tree fell on the corn rows again. Grandpa had just cleaned up the mulberry that fell on the corn from the last storm just this a.m. A black walnut tree fell close to the camper we always have set up in the backyard. An old rusty swing set saved the camper from being crushed. Several trees fell and barely covered one flower garden, but the big, old boxelder tree fell and probably destroyed another flower garden. It's sad to see the boxelder tree fall. That's where the kids (mine and their cousins- lots of cousins) always used to build their treehouses and underneath which our favorite dog. Beggar, was buried. That tree held lots of memories. Now it is gone. How sad. Grandpa and daddy got the chain saw out and started the clean up, and grandma explained about tornadoes (or tomatoes) to her granddaughter. You know, it's when the wind blows really hard and goes round and round in a big circle and could huff and puff and blow our house away if we didn't go to the basement to stay safe.

No, a tornado didn't touch down here. But all the same, there were some scary sounding winds howling about our house. But we went to the basement to stay safe. That's a grandma's job - to keep kids safe, says my granddaughter. So I did.

More storms are headed this way.