Well, what would you grab?

I remember the first time I heard what a tornado was.

There had been one in Grafton Vermont, an unheard of place for such a thing to happen. My mother told me about a woman sitting on the staircase of her house, praying, while the tornado jumped over her house, taking only the roof over her head with it.

I'm sure my mother was trying to teach me the importance of prayer with that story, but what I gained was an immense fear of the power of nature.

I was nineteen when I first moved to Tornado Alley and experienced my first siren warning beneath a green sky.

They didn't hit our town that evening. And it's a good thing since I doubt the house we were in would have stood up to a strong wolf breath let alone the wrath of a twister.

But I saw the destruction they left behind in neighboring towns though, and that fear grew deeper.

I was twenty-three when I discovered what fear really was. 

No, I didn't experience that wrath first hand. 

Worse...

I had a baby.

I had a baby the same spring I heard the story of a young couple whose baby was ripped out of the father's hands and lost from nothing more than a circular pattern of wind.

Kansas is a bad place to live with a baby and nature and fear.

I spent every storm clinging tightly to that one precious thing that I could not bear to lose. 

And then nature struck again.

No, no, I still haven't had the misfortune of a spinning house. I had another baby.

Two.

That's a lot to hold onto.

I decided car seats in the basement were a good idea. That way I could cling to the handles if necessary and if by chance one was pulled from my grasp then at least the seat might offer some sort of protection on the trip to Oz.

But before long they outgrew their baby seats, and nature struck yet again.

That's right.

Three babies.

Storms were becoming a quandary of physics.

But every spring those babies grew up a little. And every spring my fear survived one more season. 

A few weeks ago we gathered once again in the basement watching the weatherman point out the path of trajectory for the deep red rotation on his map. If it continued it would be at my door in seventeen minutes. 

I made my babies pull out their ear buds and reminded them of what to do if it came any closer. My girls nodded patiently at their annoying mother and my son jumped up and down on the couch begging for the newest version of Angry Birds. They weren't afraid. Sirens and green skies are all part of life for these Kansas kids.

I decided to focus my energy on something else. I decided that for the first time, I would think of something beyond clinging to my babies and I ventured upstairs to gather those things people say you should gather. You know, the important things that you can't live without if by chance your family is fine but the house is swept through. 

I looked around a moment, but everything important to me was already in the basement.

Playing Angry Birds.

I walked a quick circle around the house trying to think of anything that I couldn't do without besides those Kansas kids. And finally came up with a box of contacts (because it takes three weeks to replace my horrible astigmatism prescription), the train quilt that my mother sewed for Connor, and froggy (the aptly named stuffed frog that has accompanied Connor everywhere since he was a year old).

That's it.

I went back downstairs, wrapped Connor and his iPod in his quilt, and clung to froggy until that sweet weatherman changed the path of the tornado away from our house.

I thought of that woman sitting on her stairs praying as her roof was scattered to the stars, and I wondered what she would have grabbed.

Surely there was something I had overlooked in my selection of prescription eye wear and stuffed amphibians.

Like perhaps my wedding rings that were left to fend for themselves on the kitchen windowsill.

Let's not mention that to my husband, ok?

Or perhaps the file box with our important papers like car titles and house deeds.

No.

I grabbed the frog.

I'm not sure what that says about me and how I perform under pressure, but I ask you...

what would you grab?