This balance is a damn hard balance to maintain or even create. Last night, I awoke to storm sirens. Not just one, consecutive. The weather radio I have (thanks for the b-day gift 3 years ago Scot-tay!), was going off non-stop. It started around 10pm, we knew nasty weather was heading our way. We had a "blanket" tornado watch. Nothing impressive. In our area, we have been known to get a periodic tornado. So, it's a warning you heed, but most likely it's nothing. But, what if it's not nothing, and it's something? See that balance jumps in.
So, by 1am, I had on the TV watching this blob of a nasty storm approaching. At this point, I am familiar with the terms "shear winds" and "bow-echo" seen on the radar. We still had power, the noises I heard were the howling wind, my weather man, and Jeff snoring away. By, 1:30am - things looked questionable - and I had that odd feeling in my gut. I went downstairs to investigate and let the dogs out. I stared at my dogs looking for a clue. All they did was stare back, and refuse to go outside. I stepped outside and it was that weird pre-storm eerie feeling. Windy, super humid, and a reddish tint to the sky...
At that point, I decided I'd rather be safe that playing the "what if" game. If I wasn't going to go back to sleep; why should they sleep? Plus,my growing paranoia with that giant tree in the backyard was not helping. At 1:30am, I woke up Jeff and we took the kids and dogs in the basement. Over reaction? Not sure, that radar and sirens and everything looked like the perfect recipe for something REALLY nasty. We sat downstairs watching our local weather man, until the power went off at 1:45am. At that time, all we had was my weather radio and honestly, I could not remember when our tornado warnings expired. The kids and I watched the I-touch videos I had of Dora and KaiLan. By, 2:30am, I decided we had to be safe. I had not heard a siren in about 30minutes and the wind died down. However, still no power.
Long story short, everything ended up being fine. It was one nasty storm. Luckily for us we had little damage; just some new sticks in the yard and a few things blew around. I woke up this morning trying to decide, if I over reacted. Maybe. But, what if? I mean OK, we all missed out on about 1.5 hours of sleep last night. Yes, an inconvenience. I'd rather be inconvenienced than lackadaisical and end up trying to pull my daughter out from under a collapsed roof due to a tree falling due to a storm I was well warned about. I know extremes.
But, that is all this parenting thing is or feels like sometime. Balance versus Extremes . Do this and you might raise a sociopath, or do that and you raise a paranoid child scared of their own shadow, or do a little of each and raise a future President. Balance. It's hard to figure out. I hope we are doing it right.
There is always a lesson in these little adventures. What I learned was, it's OK I lead my family to safer ground. We were fine, but there are some people that lost barns, roofs, or had trees fall on their homes last night. I'm just not willing to risk it. I can tell you, we need an emergency kit. Jeff and I have discussed this for about 10 years. In that 10 years, we've survived super uber nasty storms, a hurricane on land, days without power, blizzards, etc. After all of those occurrences we talk about making one. After last night I will. I never realized how terrified you can be as a parent, sitting in the dark, listening to the wind howling not being able to know if all hell is breaking loose outside, or if it's all clear. I'll be finding us a new battery operated radio (besides my AWESOME weather radio), some bottled water, snacks, first aid kit, dog food, etc. Just a little "incase" kit. It can't hurt. It's not like I'm preparing my Y2K bunker :) I just want my family to be safe, they are worth it.
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