hodgepodge, mishmash and more

As a child I viewed tornadoes as magical tunnels of wind that will carry one off to a far-away place with tiny people, a singing lion and a metal man with a shiny, silvery face as I have seen in the movie Wizard of Oz. In the movie Twister tornadoes were treated as sport-slash-experiment where men ran after these tunnel of winds all over the country side. Things were destroyed, but everybody lived nonetheless.

Twelve years ago I moved to the south and learned that tornadoes were as common as grits and country ham. They were not confined to Kansas with Dorothy and Toto. The weather forecast became as important as the headline news in my living room every six o’clock.

Along with the grits and country ham the south is also famous for it’s hot, balmy summers preceeded by springs laden with pollen that zooms through in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately with the heat come tornadoes. As the cooler air from God knows where – we always blame Canada – collide with the hot gulf air a great fiesta in the heavens ensue. The sky turn a depressing shade of purple. Thick dark clouds form and roll. Then comes the pelting rain, hale, lightning, thunder and……tornadoes. Like a well practiced drill my children know that when the sirens blare we run for the closet, cover our heads and don’t come out until the sirens fall silent. No one talks as every ear fervently listen to the sounds from outside. Hoping against hope there will be no touchdowns. Your heart pumps a steady rhythm and slowly accelerates that each beat hammers in your throat. Your mind runs a marathon of innumerable what if’s. Rain falls in great torrents. The wind whips, you hear loud cracks, thunder booms in succession and you wonder when it will ever end. Each minute feels as if multiplied ten folds. The destruction these monters leave is indescribable in magnitude.

Tornadoes kill. Not just lives. It kill’s dreams…it’s devastating, almost debilitating. But with disaster comes hope. Time and time again I have seen communities come together and lend the biggest helping hand one could ever imagine. Good souls come out of the woodwork offering consolation in every way, form and fashion. The river of compassion abounds it’s as overwhelming as the storm itself.  Then the unnerving task of rebuilding comes…not just of homes but of lives as well.

Yesterday, as I was driving home on the interstate the skies took on an all too familiar purple shade. The wind was blowing strong I took extra effort to keep my van straight. As soon as I got home I turned on the television. We’re in for a bad thunderstorm….no tornadoes this time…the air had been cool all day. Nature won’t be having its fiesta. Looks like we’ll be fine this time around.

It’s amazing how far we have come with the aid of technology. There was a time when people kept journals in lovingly preserved books. Each thought, each memory was heartfully penned in it’s pages and was kept secret from everybody else. Your thoughts are your own and nobody else’s.

I remember as a child the pains I took to hide my diary from prying eyes. Ensuring that the pages of the precious book won’t be seen by my siblings or my mother. When I was in high school our english teacher gave us an activity to keep a journal. The very thought of having my teacher read whatever it was I planned to write mortified me. I felt violated.  I was not ready to let her in. I remember the small blue covered notebook which I decorated with red little birds. Red being my favorite color at the same time telling everyone else that I was angry at the idea of writing my thoughts for others to read. I wrote simple factual things in that notebook. What I had for lunch, what we needed to do on a particular day, what I needed to bring, etc. It was a diary allright. But more of a reminder/ schedule book  than anything else. Each time I wrote in it’s pages my hand shook from anger. The nerve! Did she expect me to actually write my whole heart and soul for her to read?! The gall! That term she stopped being my favorite teacher.

I remember her writing a note the first time she checked the notebook. She said I needed to be more creative. I didn’t care. As teenagers would say …. yeah, whatever…. I didn’t care. I was not about to let her know what I felt and how I felt regarding whom or what. The second time she checked it she wrote that I must live a boring life…hohoho!

Don’t get me wrong I love writing. If there was anything I wished more it would be to write a novel. But I wanted to write on my own terms not because I needed to pass a course. Then lo and behold comes blogs. It took me a long time to actually get down and do this. Mainly because of the same reasons. After a lot of thought I realized, I don’t need to write every nitty and gritty detail that happened to me. Blogging is just another way of expressing myself …. and without having to be graded. It dawned on me….blogging is a lot like talking to yourself in front of a mirror. Hah! maybe this will work out after all.

Blogging is totally new to me. It has been around for quite some time but it never crossed my mind until now to actively participate in one of these. I have to admit I am quite daunted by the thought of how I should go about doing this. I have tried several other sites…read through the different how to’s and played with it some in an attempt to decipher the labyrinthine instructions and mile long FAQ’s.

So world…..here goes……..