Last Wednesday, way past bedtime, we got this text: “Tornado on my street. Neighbors roof in my back yard. Kathy”. I roused, grabbed my glasses, and read it again. “Hey!” I yelled to Husband who was still up organizing wars on his computer. “Remember that waterspout on the news?”
“Yeah. So?” Having just lost half his infantry, he wasn’t too concerned.
“It hit your sister!”
His chair scraped away from the table and he scrambled for his cell phone whose raucous ring he had elected to ignore. While he absorbed the message, I quickly (well, as quickly as a non-teen can), texted back: “OMG! The news said 61st st. R U OK?” Kathy lives on 31st. She should’ve been safe. That’s why I’d retired with no further fretting. (A waterspout, BTW, is a tornado over water. If it makes landfall, it’s just a regular tornado.)
Unfortunately, Kathy isn’t our only relative on Galveston Island. There’s my mother-in-law, several blocks away on 37th, and Aunt Vivian, now living with Kathy. Last July, amidst general community hoopla, she celebrated her 101st birthday. Egad! Her bedroom faced the nearest neighbor. So…which neighbor was missing a roof? Where was she during the cataclysm?
By this time, my husband was on the phone with Kathy. I hovered like a vulture trying to grasp the details. Yes, it was the neighbor next to Aunt Vivian’s room. The freight-train roar, the wrenching rip of a roof being detached, and the horrific crash of it’s landing, had been practically in her ear. “How is Aunt Vivian?” I cried out in frustration.
A sibilant “Sh-h-h” came from Husband’s cell. He punched the speaker. “She’s still asleep,” said Kathy.
OMG.
The media had already been there. The next morning it was on the front page of the Galveston Daily News, complete with a picture of Kathy inspecting the incredible sight by flashlight. But Aunt Vivian, still mobile and alert – though missing many marbles – remains unfazed.
cluelesscaregiver
