Braving the storms...

Or something like it...

Essentials in the Storm of April 27, 2011 - book, flashlight, baby puppy Olive, and Germy, the amoeba, sewn by Lucy, (who makes an appearance in “Werewolf Hamlet.”)

A few minutes before this picture was taken, the weatherman, James Spann, yelled at us from the TV to take cover as if he could see into our living room. So this California child skedaddled to the bathtub, as we lived in a roach-ridden apartment in Homewood (the setting for the next children’s novel). It was April 27, 2011, and those storms flattened much of Alexander City and Tuscaloosa and devasted many other parts of the state.

I became aware of James Spann that day when Bo, our youngest, a sixth grader, hid in the bathtub.

A few days after those terrifying 2011 storms, my student, Jaclyn Hogan, described the aftermath when those tornadoes hit Walker County and wrote:

The trailer next door cracked in two like an egg.

I would repeat that line to her over the years, describing how she brought the workshop to its knees with that kind of description. I hope she’s still writing. I know she’s a librarian in Birmingham.

Over the years, many of my students wrote about the storms of April 27, 2011, that occurred when most were Bo’s age or younger, and I would tell them - I know - I remember. But I didn’t face what those young children faced and later grew up to write about in terrifying essays set in dark basements or kitchens or storm shelters. The storm passed us by that day, and we put the blankets back on the bed and continued about our lives. I ran over debris on the road and spent several hours at COSTCO getting a couple of tires replaced. That was my inconvenience in 2011.

***

Over this past weekend, we spent the day glued to the coverage of impending Mississippi and Alabama tornadoes. Would there be a repeat of 2011? We even went so far as to take chairs, important papers, blankets, water, flashlights, and a windup radio to the basement, although our cell phones were charged to the hilt.

I kept turning on James Spann’s YouTube to keep us updated.

Kiffen, who is still relatively new to Alabama, asked me, “Who is James Spann?”

To best answer this question, here is what a friend, Holly Hart Shirley, wrote on her FB page - “If you’ve just moved to Alabama, become acquainted with James Spann. If he rolls up his sleeves, pay attention. If his tie comes off, get right with Jesus. Respect the Polygon and y’all stay safe today.”

This is James Spann, the mostly beloved weatherman, except for the dum-dums who like to provoke him if the weather doesn’t turn out exactly as he predicts. He never takes the bait when they write idiotic things like “James Spann lied to us.”

With the impending approach of last Saturday’s storms, two of Bo’s friends, Jess and Juan Pablo, texted the day before and asked to come over with their cats to avoid being in their apartment. They arrived early Saturday afternoon with ice, cats, and curry to begin the day of waiting for what might or might not come. Their cats hung out in the guest bedroom (except for a living room exploration when the worst was over) while Wilbur, scratched at the door to visit them. Jess, a med student, told us about delivering babies this past week on her rounds, and her partner, Juan Pablo, made us green curry with rice.

By nightfall, we broke out the cards to play Spades, Hearts, and Spoons. Jess taught me the rules because I rarely play cards except maybe every five years when I have to learn the rules all over again. It was a calm and uneventful day even as the storms roared across the state, some skirting beneath Birmingham and others moving overhead. No alarms sounded, and it was a relief when all the watches were called off.

I kept Bo in the loop, who wrote from Chicago: “I’m so glad they came over. I want a stormy game day.”

And it was a stormy game day. Other parts of Alabama didn’t fare so well. Fourteen tornadoes were confirmed and three deaths. So the James Spann hecklers were told to get right with God along with a few other choice words.

My mother texted me two days after the storms.

i’ve been watching the weather in your area and it looks like there was a lot of damage done in Alabama. when you get a chance, tell me how you are doing.

***

I wrote her that we were fine, recovering more from the trip to California than the storms here in Alabama. It was a beautiful book tour, seeing beloved friends and talking about the story, and it was also exhausting because the smell of jasmine kept making me cry with a kind of muscle memory sense of home.

Weirdly enough, I felt four earthquakes in Los Angeles. Two were rolling jolts, and the other two barely a whisper of the ground shaking. Two were on the news, and I didn’t look to see if the other two were, but I felt them upstairs in Lily and Cora’s childhood bedroom where we were staying with dear friends, Laura and JT, in Mt. Washington.

There was also a flood in a San Diego bookstore, Mysterious Galaxy, so my reading was postponed until May, but we made a night of it anyway with San Diego writers and visiting writers to the city and invited Chris Baron and his wife, Ella de Castro Baron, for dinner, and Chris Tebbetts, and his husband, Jonathan, because the two Chris’s have been trying to meet for seven years and have never managed to be in the same place at the same time.

But it was also my late Dad’s birthday, and I wanted to have people around the table where he and Mom loved gathering our family. I found a yellow tablecloth to invoke spring, and Kiffen cooked for everybody.

Mom asked, “Where in the world did you find that yellow tablecloth?”

It was a lovely evening, and I know it would have pleased Dad. We even used my grandmother’s antique dishes, which came out once for Thanksgiving a few years ago but that’s about it. It was so much fun to take GrandMary’s dishes out of the cabinet and dust them off, and after dinner, my brother, Duffy, hand-washed every single dish without missing a beat.

My mom will be 90 in August, and she likes to say, “I’m teetering on 90 I’ll have you know.”

***

We stayed an extra weekend in California with no book tour things, so we could spend time with our son, Flannery, who sometimes reads this Substack, and I wish he would write one of his own. We also visited him at his home beneath the 101 Freeway overpass at the Silver Lake Exit, which was the exit of his childhood to our home in Silver Lake where we raised our three children. His neighbors are Bill and Andrea who live in tents on either side of him and other folks too. They are a community that cares about each other and looks out for one another.

We purposely carved out time to have with him because it’s never enough time to be with him living so far away. The day before we left, we brought sacks of Kentucky Fried Chicken with sides of baked beans, coleslaw, and apple pies to this little community of tents.

Kiffen also carried huge cases of water and Gatorade.

It’s hard to know what to bring.

It’s hard to know what to do.

It took us forever to find a KFC in Silver Lake and Echo Park because they weren’t where we remembered them. Finally, we found one on Vermont Ave. and made it to the underpass, traffic thundering overhead.

I always think I can handle it. I make myself handle it. I hear my football coach's father’s voice telling me, “Get tough, look alive. Keep your eye on the ball. Focus.”

I try, but it’s hard to stand beneath an overpass, waiting for a son to appear.

One night while in Los Angeles, I read an essay someone wrote about us that I had very much encouraged the writing of with much bravado a year ago, but a line wounded when I read it - because we were the parents who let our child watch Bela Lugosi movies as a young boy. We were those Bela Lugosi parents. He was too young to watch those movies. The other parents were wiser, knew this, and disapproved. We should have known better than to encourage Bela Lugosi fandom. Now our son lives beneath the Silver Lake Exit because we allowed this.

Of course, it’s not true. It’s not rational. It’s not anything but what is true, and I hate that I can’t turn back time and fix or change any of it, and there is nothing to do but let it go.

One more thing to let go.

And bring Kentucky Fried Chicken to the overpass beneath the 101 Freeway.

During our time together, we all went to SELAH, a beautiful organization that focuses on the community for the unhoused, offering clothes, showers, and even a Gene Hackman tribute of his movies playing on a loop, plus IDs, and food from the Hollywood Food Coalition. We sat with him at SELAH, while he worked the room all Saturday afternoon. He could always work a room. He picked out some warm coats for his neighbors.

Later he said, "We should haven't gone there. I can't talk to you while there. I need to work the room." But I didn't care he was "working the room." I was just glad to be with him. I found other people that day - Pastor Kyle, Patrick, and Adam. I asked them to keep an eye on him. They promised they would. Our friend, Justin, introduced us to SELAH. If I lived in LA, I would work at SELAH. I would volunteer at the Sidewalk Project where we have volunteered a few times to make harm reduction kits.

We had coffee our last evening together and Flannery wanted us to make it look like “Pulp Fiction” shots because the Vista Movie Theatre, where we took them as kids, is now Quentin Tarantino’s movie theatre.

I couldn’t do it right, so Kiffen took the pictures.

Then Flannery shot this as we were leaving.