Nature has a funny way of knocking perspective into you doesn’t it?
Last Saturday morning I was on the phone with a friend lamenting the slow season here in Nashville. I don’t know about your town, but this town for all intents and purposes shuts down from Thanksgiving until mid January. My industry is primarily music business based and it’s the one time of year that there’s just not much happening. Festival season is over, Summer and Fall tours are done and Spring releases are months away. And that leaves the non musical creatives like myself with not much to do for a couple of months.
I mean, some down time after a busy year ain’t bad, except there’s also not much money to be made. The quiet, the dark, the cold, the lack of stuff to do and no checks coming in can put a hurt on your mental health if you aren’t careful.
That was the morning… a few hours later I found myself in my closet with my cat & two dogs tucked under my clothes as an F2 tornado tore through my neighborhood missing my house by mere blocks.
I was on a couple of text threads with friends all around the city as it happened. We were all tuned into multiple live weather broadcasts. We knew some Southern counties had already taken some big hits and for a second it looked like it might take the same path as the 2020 tornado; right through downtown into East Nashville. But then it shifted North and seemed like it was going to miss us altogether. But just before 5:00 it shifted East, jumped the interstate and was headed right at me here in Madison. And by right at me, I mean right at me. My phone started blowing up with “Stace?”, “Stacie?”, “Stace, you ok up there?”
I wasn’t. I was terrified, it was pitch black, almost silent and the air was eerily still. In a few seconds, I heard a slight rumble, the lights were flickering off and on and I could feel the lightest vibration. I couldn’t tell if I could feel it in the ground or if it was in or the actual bones of the house, but I felt it. I curled over my knees for my back to take the brunt of it, clutching the animals in as close as I could and waited for what seemed like an eternity but what was actually seconds. - Nothing happened. - The rumble went away and the broadcasters said it had shifted North again and up Gallatin Road it went taking most everything with it.
Morning light brought the images into focus. The devastation was expansive and included two states and numerous counties. Six people lost their lives that afternoon.
This wasn’t the first time I’ve had a near miss with a big tornado, and living in Tennessee with global temps on the rise, I’m quite sure it won’t be the last. But that affords me one luxury…
I know exactly what to do “after” a tornado.
I Mobilize
I cannot just sit by when something like that happens. It makes me crazy because outside of the literal emergency responders like fire trucks and ambulances, actual recovery from something like this is painfully slow. That’s not a slight to anyone; there are many fine organizations and city response teams that get out there right away. But it’s just physically impossible to help that many people at once. It takes an army of volunteers and donors to dig into those hardest hit areas to help shovel people out. It will be weeks for some before there is power, and for some, months before they will have a place to live again.
I’m blessed to have an amazing social media following who help me with donations during something like this and are familiar with the Amazon wish lists I put together. So we get to cracking. I find local organizations and neighborhood volunteers & let them assess what is needed and then I start asking for it. And slowly but surely, my people come through. They buy from the list and they send monetary donations for what I need on the fly, and every time, I’m blown away with gratitude.
Today I delivered a generator, a camping stove, some heaters, propane, food, clothing, blankets, cleaning supplies, soap and I lost count of how many cases of bottled water to people in need. I’m achy, tired and still a little chilly even after a hot shower. (A shower I feel incredibly privileged to be able to take for the record.)
And so here I am, four days later and “the slow season” is the least of my concerns.
A Twister Comes Full Circle
I told you in my last piece that I used to be a big ol’ loudmouth (and some of you well remember). This mouth has gotten me into 99.6% of the trouble I’ve been in for most of my life. It has also been the instrument to blame for a few pretty epic feuds, some more public than others.
Because now I know better, I will not name names this time, nor will I remind anyone of who I’m talking about. But in a very funny twist of fate, I came face to face with two people from some of my most notorious public feuds today. One I delivered the generator to, the other was overseeing some of the food, clothing and water donations I had collected and was delivering to affected homes. In both cases, the look on our faces when I arrived was nothing short of hilarious.
Its funny when you run into someone like that. Like your first instinct is “Eww, I don’t like that person”, but when you’re standing in a debris field that used to be a neighborhood, you don’t get into old shit. It’s one of those beautiful unspoken rules of humanness.
I mused in my last / first piece here that part of this journey back to writing was me wondering who I am if I’m not still that loud mouthed, opinionated gal I was back in 2019, and today I got a little insight.
In both cases, I took a deep sigh, internally laughed at the universe for landing me right there of all places, did the business we were there to do, and then gave them each a big hug and thanked them for caring about our neighbors and about our neighborhood.
Because, fuck all if I know who they are today anymore than they know me now. I can’t expect anyone to give me grace as the new entity that I am becoming if I can’t give that very grace back to others.
The tornados may be here to stay, but I can be the calm in the storm.