The Storm

This is a map of the storm I wanted to post. It was printed in the paper Monday. It says it all about danger and about being watchful. Even the children have asked questions about storm safety. The map shows the line of the storm which is very interesting because it goes in a straight line. It's good to know for future reference.

And for today's reference, Yesterday, one of the Japanese families asked about our building and about shelter and storms. I told Kaito's father that the plans for our building were inspected by Roger Lehman the building inspector here in Evansville. Roger graciously looked over what we intended to do and helped us build the safest building we could. The entire structure is steel - not wood. It was built as a school with children's safety our first consideration. The walls are all double fire walls. It is supposed to be guaranteed to 80 mph winds.

In the event of a storm, we go to the bathrooms and we use the Tornado Turtle to protect ourselves. We have a storm radio that sends off an alarm when raindrops hit anywhere near, and because of all the windows, and the fact that I'm a safety scroup - that's a large kangaroo like creature with an enormous pouch - we watch for storms and bad weather.

We practice drills all the time. The kids do a fire drill once a month and recently we have been doing storm drills.

This past storm has really hurt us emotionally, and we will remember that for the future as well. The children are an emotional ship wreck. We realize they can't articulate the real questions, and their acting out is the real question: "Am I safe?"

"Yes." I want to call out to them. You are safe. When I think of how we build homes in America, how we live among trees, scattered through the country side, I realize how industrious we are. If Newburgh had been designed like so many foreign cities and towns tacks of shacks, there would be a lot more people dead, and we couldn't say, "Yes, you are safe."

If the trailer park had been built in a circle around a park, with space and some shelter, there would not have been such destruction. No place should look like that. It was clean, neat, well kept, and orderly, but it was intensely ugly and almost unAmerican in what it was trying to do - shove too many people into too small a space.

Home is a major importance to Americans. We take enormous pride in our ability to be hospitable and welcoming, and you can't do that well in a mess. Children brought up in "homes" rather than chaos do better in school and therefore in life than children dragged from one place to another.

When I was a child I moved seventeen times in seventeen years. As my home was crated and un-rated, shipped from one end of the country to the other, I realized my stability had to be in my mind. I was a terrible student and floundered in school after school - ten times in a row. It wasn't until college that I realized that stability encourages study and chaos cripples it.

Transient life is not how it's supposed to be. As a young woman, I seriously looked at entering a cloistered convent in Washington to separate myself from chaos, but I was afraid of the staunch stability a cloistered convent demanded. I didn't understand it. Three years later, I married and settled down to ONE home which my husband and I found together in Newburgh. We take such pleasure in our home and in our children coming home year after year. It means so much to us.

Home is important and we should encourage one another in homemaking. Homemaking is not a flash from the past lost skill nobody wants. If that were the case, why do people shop endlessly looking at home trinkets, furniture, kitchen gadgets? Homemaking is very much alive and "cooking." And it doesn't matter to a child if it is modern or antique. It doesn't matter if it's pastel or bold primary colors. Home is a continuation of self, a loving reminder that it was put together for them, for them to enjoy, for them to be safe in.

Sometimes, when danger is at hand, we tremble with anticipation, but children should be content to know that danger is only fleeting, and that safety, here in America is a constant.