24 days later

So there was a massive tornado where I live. The deadliest tornado in the country since 1925. You might have heard of it or seen one of the 2,610 Youtube videos of it like this or like this.

A bunch of people have written about it. There have been multiple calls to share storm stories via Alabama Public Radio and in print. The University of Alabama writing folks have already put out a book about it. They are excellent writers doing what they do best. Many excellent writers have written about the tornadoes. But I do not want to read any of it.

A bunch of people have taken pictures. Immediately after the tornado, cars drove down my street (in the "affected area," which means destruction zone) holding iphones out the windows, driving slowly as though in a parade. Families walked past our house pointing with their cameras at pines slicing living rooms in half. Photographers with their $2,000 zoom lenses seized on images of what, just an hour before, had been places called homes. Places where a couple would no longer snuggle in bed together, a dog would no longer gnaw a chew toy, a toddler would no longer beg her mother to read her just one more bedtime story. I do not want to look at pictures like this and I do not want to take them.

I took two pictures at the insistence of my mother. One is of the currently uninhabitable next-door-neighbor's place, in the middle stage of removing trees off of their roof and car. (My mother asked for a frame of reference for how close we were to destruction. Our place is miraculously, thankfully, fine.) The other picture is of the donation center set up on a destroyed Church of Christ foundation about 1/4 mile from our house. It's where we've been donating peanut butter, loaves of bread, water, diapers, tampons, cat litter... I wanted to remember that place, and I wanted to remember their kindness and gratitude and the fact that these Christians were doing and not saying. Not one of them tried to recruit us to their church or preach to us.

I took both these pictures about a week after the tornado. I felt a little like I was doing something wrong. Like I did not want to be seen taking them.

I understand that documentation is important, and I've been wondering why, especially as a writer, I've been so resistant to be a part of it at this moment. Something about it, perhaps how easily it can turn from Earnest and Necessary Documentation to Touring Someone's Devastation, is uncomfortable.

I've only drafted several poem scraps since the tornado. I can't escape the idea of tall trees being scooped up and thrown down through roofs and windows like massive and deadly pick up sticks all around me. And I can't escape hearing on talk radio that people were found wandering the streets in shock, with one or more limbs severed from their bodies. Images like these have shown up in my poems and will probably persist for a while. The poems are huge scribbly messes that, at least right now, I have no desire to clean up or send out for publication.

As far as writing about the tornado directly, I've wondered if I ever would, or how long it would take me. It's been 24 days today. I don't know why I'm writing this now... perhaps because I'm sick for a week and I'm bored. But I wouldn't say I necessarily felt a sense of urgency to write this. I wasn't compelled to write this.

I have felt compelled, though--every day--to tell my husband how much I love him. I have felt visceral solar plexus necessity in that. The sheer urgency in that. I have felt the urgency to tell my cats, who were scared of the LED camp lanterns we carried to light the way in our home, that things are going to be OK. And that I love them. To tell the post-tornado abandoned newborn kitten we found in our driveway that he's going to make it and that I love him. And most of all, to watch the ultrasound video of our 25 week old fetus over and over again, and to tell whoever's in there how much we love them.

This is what feels natural and comfortable to me. This is what I've been compelled to do.