Pick Your Poison

I listened to an official from the Oklahoma State Police break down into tears describing the aftermath of the tornadoes there. I had seen some photos, and listened to a lot of radio, but this woman's perspective really got me. She's a professional, not melodramatic at all, and by virtue of her chosen vocation, not unfamiliar with atrocity. It is the loss of children that gives us the most pause, and the grieving of their parents. To be a parent is to fail, daily. However, the joy of parenting is the constant renewal of opportunity--the resilience of your child. They have a faith in us, in spite of our shortcomings. They have faith that we are good, capable and can protect them. But we cannot. And in failing to protect them once, all of our other failures are magnified. Failures of patience, failures of sensitivity, all pale in comparison, and are also magnified by any failure to protect. Why would anyone live there? I hear people ask, Tornado Alley! Really!? It's all a question of degree. I puzzle at my neighbors on Hatteras Island, a Hurricane Hole, as we call it. But we get hit, again and again. If a tornado is a knock out punch in a street brawl, a hurricane is the crush of an enraged mob in a soccer stadium, or a street riot. In many ways though they are similar. The tornado's odds are slim--wrong place at the wrong time etc. But as the hurricane's footprint is large, its catastrophic damage is random. So much depends on terrain, exposure, construction technique, the age of the structure. Why would anyone live here? Why does anyone live anywhere? Born here. Beautiful. Peaceful. Found work. Can't find work. Just kind of ended up here. Wherever you've ended up, you can't protect your children, you can't protect yourself, you can't dot all of the i's and cross all of the t's. You can only make a life. And a life is worth making, anyplace. I wonder if the real danger isn't found in the real reward? The finer a life you make--the less you fail your kids, your spouse, your boss, your friends--the more you have to lose. I listened to another engaging story this morning about cicadas. They will emerge this year, after seventeen years underground. They will burst from their exoskeletons, sing songs, mate, and die. Their offspring will burrow into the ground, and repeat the process in seventeen years. The biologist interviewed explained that the cicada's life cycle has evolved as a way to overwhelm predators, and ensure the propagation of the species. Forced to pay attention to the harshness of our environment through natural disasters, our disregard for our humanity in Asian sweatshops, and the evil among us in the form of teenage terrorists, I will take the cicada's path. I'll emerge, make some noise, make a family, do what I can to protect it, and go in peace, hopefully.