Mother's Day Present

Mother’s Day Present

I am wearing a red silk dress when the sky bruises

bile green on the stretch between Bentonsport

and Keosauqua. If we get in a ditch

I’ll muddy my only good dress.

I keep driving.

Why’re you driving so fast, Mom? one of the boys asks.

I glance sideways without turning my head.

A veiled presence sucks black dirt

from bare fields, throws up

a wall of mud.

Our midget lunchbox is pushing ninety.

A mile south of town, only

sixtyheartbeatsfromhome,

the mud hits. I can’t see

the road.

The roar rocks the horizon, batters the glass.

Bouncing up and down in their seats,

the teenage twins shout, Cyclone Ride!

The youngest in the back

screaming.

I am wrenching the wheel as if I am driving

the wind, chanting all the names

of Mother and cursing

my red silk

vanity.

Sudden silence, wet golden light. We are sitting still

between the splintered remains of a shed

and phone poles shorn like corn stalks,

wet wires coiled around

rubber tires.

Mother’s Day present, whispers

the stillness. I wind among

black serpents,

shaking.

On Mother's Day, 8 May 1988, a single mother with three sons decides to treat herself to a nice dinner at a restaurant in Bentonsport, an old river village on the Des Moines River. It's a beautiful sunny day and when we head home after a delicious meal there are no signs of a storm. This is a few years before the U.S. National Weather Service installs the Doppler Radar network to give advance warning of severe weather.

          Heading north on Highway 1, about five miles from home a dark wall cloud forms to the west, whirling dirt from the freshly harrowed fields and emitting a loud, continuous roar. Having witnessed many tornadoes in this part of the United States called Tornado Alley, I immediately realize we're in danger. But there's no place to take shelter underground along that stretch of highway. 

          In such circumstances, you're supposed to get out of the car and lie face down in a ditch, but I don't want to ruin my red silk dress and I'm not convinced we'd really be protected from flying debris, the main cause of injuries and fatalities in tornadoes. Also, we're so close to home and the safety of our basement. I'm driving a Dodge Horizon, a little yellow box with a top speed of 80 mph. I put the pedal to the metal and push her as fast as she'll go. Not fast enough to outrun a tornado.

          By the time the wall of muddy rain forces me to stop, it's too late to pull over to the side of the road and I can only hope and pray that no one will drive into us while we're sitting in the traffic lane. The only other safe thing we could do in this vulnerable position would be to put our heads down below the level of the windows, which could easily get broken by the force of the wind, but by now I'm too frightened to think clearly.

          Tornadoes can completely destroy some buildings while leaving others intact. Flimsy buildings and anything else not firmly attached to the ground, such as vehicles, are especially prone to damage. So we are incredibly fortunate to survive sitting out a tornado that felled telephone poles, snapped power lines and blew apart a little shed right next to our flimsy little car and didn't flip us over or even break our windows.

          According to USA.com, the tornado that struck southeast Iowa at 12:47 pm that Mother's Day was a magnitude EF2 (strong). It was 60 yards wide and traveled 71 miles, from Bloomfield in the southwest to northeast of Washington, just grazing the west edge of Fairfield. It caused $25 million in property damage around our town, but no injuries or fatalities.