First Impressions

We were a cobbled-together little band of six who piled into trusty "Bessie" for the weekend trip to Tuscaloosa. In various ways, we were each responding to the call to pitch in and help the people of a community still partially numb from the disaster of April 27, 2011. I suggested taking Cole on this trip, knowing it would impact his life in a way that day-to-day ordinary life in Greenville never could. Michelle also wanted to take Cassie, and at the last minute we were able to add on fellow UA-mom Ginger and nurse Catherine. Each one, hand-picked by God for this adventure.

Some of my first impressions as we got closer to our exit on I-20 included what was playing on the radio. Most stations, even nine days post-storm, had switched from their regular music or talk format to a call-in program where people offering assistance and those needing supplies or volunteers could find each other. Even 20 miles or so before reaching Tuscaloosa, there were banners and posters advertising for tornado relief collection points or simply giving residents information on how to apply for assistance or where to go for shelter. The week before I had been frustrated with the media's nonstop coverage of a royal wedding I had no relative interest in and then the OBL assassination. The news cycle seemed to have quickly and painlessly moved forward from the massive needs across several hard-hit southern states. It didn't take more than a few minutes in Alabama for out little group to be brought back to the reality that these people had thought about little else than tornado recovery for the past week and a half. And some will likely do so for weeks, months, even years to come.

It also seemed so odd that we could drive along McFarland Boulevard, and aside from relief tents in the parking lots and military vehicles in abundance, there was no sign of the storm.

Then we were at 15th Street.

Buildings with blue-tarped roofs or no roofs at all. Cars scattered every which way with broken-out windows and covered in dust & rubble. Enormous chunks of concrete haphazardly piled where the tornado had tossed the remains of businesses. Trees that had become sci-fi-like, leafless, broken sticks and stumps poking out of the ground at random angles. And a few blocks later, we were again driving in normal-world.





Hard to comprehend how something so violently destructive could leave this kind of devastation along its reckless path through a city. But life on both sides of its wake seemed untouched. We didn't yet know about the people we would meet and stories we would hear over the weekend that would dispel the illusion of life being in any way normal, even if outward appearances made it seem that way.