Tornadoes are not a joke

I was talking to my sister, Joann, on the phone. She was in Minnesota and I was in Nashville, Tennessee. As I sat peering out of my office window it started to rain - really hard. Talking to my favorite sister, listening to the rain, feeling safe inside - life was good!
The next minute the emergency sirens began to howl and it caught me off-guard.
I grew up in Minnesota - this was not tornado weather. Tornado weather in Minnesota meant that the sky turned yellow and the atmosphere was eerily silent. It had a surreal feel to it.
This looked and felt like a rain storm, and a mellow one at that.
But I decided to heed the call of the sirens. I trudged downstairs, took a blanket and pillow off of my bed and headed for the small bathroom on the main floor. I had determined when I moved to Tennessee two years before that this was the safest place for disasters - the only room without any windows, and in the middle of the house. You see, the houses in Tennessee are not built with basements. When I ask people about this they tell me that the soil here is way too hard, and too full of clay to have basements and swimming pools. It is too costly.
I peeked out of the window to see the rain being blown to the side, uphill. I have never seen a sight like this in my life. There was a slight resemblance to The Wizard of Oz as I watched tree branches breaking and being tossed through the air as if they were weightless.
I turned on the TV in the living room so I could hear updates, and for the next hour I heard about the six tornado cells that were on the ground. The worst one was in Murfreesboro, about a 30-minute drive from my house; the town that my college-age daughter lives in.
I grabbed my cell phone and called Lauren.
"Yes, Mom, I am okay. Yes, the sirens are going off here but it looks okay."
"Are you watching the news?"
"Yes, Randy and I have the TV on."
"Lauren, head for cover."

An hour later when I emerged from the bathroom where I had been reading as I lay on the floor, the sun was trying to peek out.
I lowered myself to the couch and watched the damage that occurred, as reporters told about the devastation that the twister had left in its path: the deaths, the young mother trying to outrun the twister with her 4-month-old baby, the houses that were flattened. I felt sick to my stomach and called to make sure Lauren was okay.
When she answered the phone she told me, in a weeping voice, about the rearranged landscape that occurred less than five minutes from her house.
A tornado, a twister changed so many lives in that one hour as people rushed to get their treats and food for the upcoming Easter holiday.
The Easter baskets. treats, little white lace gloves and the clean house for the relatives were not important any more.
Mother Nature was in control. The creator of Mother Nature was holding the remote control.
Easter came and went, people celebrated, lives went on. But to many here in Tennessee this weekend was a time to hand the control back to the creator. A time to mourn and a time to laugh.