Starting Small
We live in Tornado Alley, and have our entire lives. To make things even more intense, we have a meteorologist in the family who, in tornado season, calls us at every wee hour imaginable to inform us that it’s time to go to our “safe place.”
Huh? I grew up with a father who wouldn’t leave his station at the kitchen table, armed with a newspaper for entertainment and a transistor radio for news, come hell or high water. Mom and we kids would tramp down to the basement, pleading with him to come with us, but nothing doing.
“If it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go,” he’d say.
And then one of us would invariably call back to him, “But what if it’s just your time to go TO THE BASEMENT?”
Over the years, I’ve turned into my father. I really don’t love the basement. There’s not a Sleep Number bed down there, and I’m spoiled. I figure I’d hear that freight-train roar that everyone associates with a tornado about to blow the roof off, and have at least three seconds of warning to get myself down the stairs if I really had to.
But now, there’s the meteorologist to deal with.
Last spring, he sent us to the basement at ungodly hours three times in one week. We’ve got a little TV down there, and a couch, and honestly, we could just set up housekeeping I guess. And you know what? Maybe this tornado season I will. Because I finally figured out how to make the transition from Sleep Comfort to discomfort a little bit easier.
Instead of stopping off in the kitchen and rummaging through cabinets and drawers looking for flashlights in case we end up in the basement sans electricity, I realized that one little hook screwed into the wall of the stairwell would solve half—-or maybe all—-of my Basement Resistance. Now I’ve got two flashlights, one for each of us, with fresh batteries hanging from that hook, ready for our next tornadic descent.
Hanging those flashlights where I could grab them on our way down prompted me to add further items to my tornado preparedness. A few more simple strategies, and suddenly I don’t dread the drag out of bed nearly as much as I used to. I’ll share those steps with you, too, but for now, do this one little thing: Hang a flashlight on a hook.
Then if, as you’re heading downstairs, you want to philosophize like my dad and say, “If it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go,” you’ll at least be able to shine a bit more light on the subject than he did.
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