Greensburg

This is what is left of Greensburg, Kansas. I lived there when I was young - my dad sold Farmer's Insurance and my mom was a home health nurse. I used to walk to my dad's office downtown after school. He would give me loose change and I would go a few doors down to the drugstore where you could get a cherry coke and penny candy. Across the street was the library - I think I read everything in the children's section. We lived close to the largest hand-dug well, and my sister and I would walk over and look at the meteorite in the gift shop. We had apple trees in our backyard and they produced tiny, inedible fruit that rotted on the ground and made the air smell thick.

The well is still there, but everything else - including the meteorite - is gone. 95% of the town was destroyed by a tornado last night. I haven't been to Greensburg for a long time, more than 20 years, but tonight watching the footage on the news I recognized landmarks under the rubble and it took my breath away. I know that the sense of loss I have tonight is nothing compared to the people who live there now, nothing compared to the loss that the community is feeling in the aftermath, but I do feel loss. I remember the names of the kids I played with, I have fuzzy memories of their homes and families. Leah Beth's brother Skip shot at us with a BB gun and then climbed up onto the basketball hoop to hide from his dad. They had chickens in their backyard and they laughed and called me a "city girl" because I was afraid of them. I was in love with a boy named Brad who used to walk me to my dad's office after school and dreamed of being a farmer. There was Rachel, a frail, paper-thin girl who had a constant runny nose and Rebecca who always smelled like leaves.

That was where I lost my teeth and learned to read. Those were the first friends that I remember. That is where I became a Brownie and where I learned how bread and butter were made. We learned phonics and addition, we had spelling tests and ate paste. We compared Underoos in the girls bathroom. I was Wonder Woman.

I don't know what happened to those friends. I don't know how many of them were asleep last night in homes that no longer exist. I hope they are as safe tonight in reality as they have been in my memory.

I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to lose your entire city. Everything. Schools, hospital, houses, businesses, everything. The amazing thing to me is that considering the extent of the damage there were "only" 9 deaths reported so far. I know that to the community and to the families "only" is a horrible way to describe it, but looking at the photographs and the footage of what is left of this town it is a wonder that anyone walked away at all.

There are bad storms here tonight, they haven't hit where I am yet, but they're coming. You can feel the build in the air, you can smell the rain and the anticipation. There are no cats in the backyard tonight, no birds singing this evening. In the city they say it's warmer and the tornadoes tend to skirt the outsides of town. In my experience this tends to be true, but who can really say?