Image by julay via Flickr

Yesterday we had such fickle weather, one second it was cold and not a stitch of wind in the air, the next we were hearing tornado sirens, seeing dark clouds clawing and stretching towards the ground, and taking things seriously and retreating into the basement.

This scenario has happened many times before, but apparently my kids hadn’t remembered ever having to head to the basement to avoid potential twister run-ins.  They were visibly shaking, crying and over all just terrified that our house would blow away, all the neighbors’ pets would be stuck up in trees and that they’d have no underwear when we went back upstairs.

Thinking my oldest son was simply worried about our safety, and that was the reason for his meltdown, I calmly assured him that we were fine, we had each other, and God was protecting us.  He frantically disagreed, saying, "but what if the video games blow away???? ".

My husband and I tried not to giggle in that moment, and continued to work on chilling everyone out.  My oldest was shaken up the rest of the day though, obsessing over the what-if’s.  Asking question after question like, "where do you go when a tornado takes you away ?" and "how does a tornado kill you, exactly? ".

I felt grateful that I can normally bear the fears and burdens for my kids, reminding myself that their sensitive hearts need much protecting, and made a mental note to grab the video games next time.

***

Arianne also writes at her personal blog To Think Is To Create

Tags: Kids and Teens, Tornado, Tornadoes, Video game, Weather, Weather Phenomena

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 11:15 am and is filed under parent. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.