I am pretty well adjusted to living in Georgia these days. In fact, I am crazy in love with this place. Don't tell my husband, because someday down the road we will end up back north to be with my brothers and all the little rugrats they will have by then, running around and raising hell in Massachusetts. Family. There's a word that is so much more than just a word. Think of all the words you say each day. Which ones make you stop and have a feeling? Family makes my heart beat so loudly and proudly that I admit I find myself trying to find ways to squeeze it into a sentence just so I can say it. Family. Just six letters, but more meaning to me than maybe anything else in my life. Here are just some of the amazing people in my family!
<a href="http://s1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb402/jacquelinepmiller/?action=view&current=phaneufs.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb402/jacquelinepmiller/phaneufs.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
I love the above picture but I am heartbroken that my future sister-in-law is not in there, so I'm adding a picture just for her! Here she is at my wedding with my parents.
<a href="http://s1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb402/jacquelinepmiller/?action=view&current=momdadandchelsea.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb402/jacquelinepmiller/momdadandchelsea.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
Another word that I'll admit I have been a little confused about lately is the word home. I'm so torn. Is Massachusetts my home, or is Georgia? Can it be both? Right now I admit I use the word to describe both places. When I say the word, the first place that comes to mind is Massachusetts. But, Georgia is where I live, so it's my home too. I know it's not a big deal, but I find myself feeling irked every time I use it when I talk about Georgia. Home is where the heart is, so they say, and while I visit my family in MA Eric is here, so I will continue to use the word to reference both places.
When I look at the word, I will always go back to my younger days and think of all the things that happened in MA that made me the person I am today. It is such an important place to me, and will always be my forever home.
This is not a real sign, but it makes me laugh since we have the reputation of being terrible drivers! Those crazy Massholes! I am proud to be one!
<a href="http://s1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb402/jacquelinepmiller/?action=view&current=mass.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb402/jacquelinepmiller/mass.gif" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
I think I finally figured out how to imbed pictures in my blog, so here's to improvement! I hope it works!
Jimmy Buffett concert tomorrow night. I CANNOT wait to hang with Emily and Skye all day in the nice warm sun! Bring it on quickly, please!
Monday, May 23, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
Why not me?
I don't know a word that exists to describe the way I am feeling. Eight days ago, tornadoes ripped through the South. First, the town I lived in for the two years before this one was destroyed. Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It is not a town full of people that are well off. There are poor families, and poor college students everywhere. The housing is not the greatest to begin with. I wonder how the city will recover. Malls, apartments and homes were ripped apart. I have a lot of friends in that town and I went into panic mode while watching the weather channel. Picture after picture showed places that are familiar to me. Gone. People, dead. The numbers kept rising. I knew I would just have to wait. Wait. Wait. Wait, and pray, that none of those lost were people that I loved. I know that's a selfish thing, to wish they weren't mine is to wish they belonged to someone else. Days later I would finally get my messages that everyone I know and love is safe.
Eric and I were with his parents at their house. We kept watching the weather channel. No words were being spoken. We couldn't speak, our jaws were too busy being dropped to the ground because of the images we were seeing. Birmingham, Alabama was next. So much terror everywhere, yet we had not given one thought to the fact that we might be in danger. No, not us. Every storm so far had gone from lower Alabama and traveled over Northwest Georgia into Tennessee. "No," I thought to myself, "We will be fine." I got on the phone and invited friends to come stay with us. "It all seems to be missing us. We still have power, and haven't had a drop of rain. Come on down, we'll keep you all safe." How naive I am. Ugh. My friends arrived and we thought we were going to have a super slumber party. All of a sudden Eric drives quickly up our gravel driveway. I knew it wasn't going to be good before he got inside. He never drives quickly up the driveway because he is so careful about flinging the gravel everywhere. He came inside and told us the news. "The tornado is five minutes away from hitting Ringgold." "What? What do you mean it's actually HERE," I thought. We packed up and went across the street to take refuge in Nana's basement. There we sat for hours, wondering and waiting. Waiting for what? We didn't really know. I nervously word vomited all night because that's what I do when I'm nervous, and when I'm not nervous for that matter. I'm a talker. I can't help myself. I would talk to a wall for days if no one else was around to listen. I don't think silence makes me uncomfortable, I just love conversing with people and making them laugh. The girls were all inside nervously chatting while the brave boys were outside watching the storm pass by. We didn't know it at the time, but what we were watching was the EF tornado travel into Ringgold to destroy it.
I have felt like a nomad down here. I have people that I love and that love me, but I haven't had a sense of belonging to a community. I have such strong roots in my hometown in Belchertown, and I have yet to feel even the smallest inkling of that somewhere else. I am detached from the community of Ringgold, and yet I still struggle to make sense of this tragedy in my head. Eric grew up here. This is his Belchertown. It makes me sick to drive around and see the damage with him. I know he's acting brave for me, but I know how hurt he is inside. This is one time that his silence speaks volumes. I'm always after him to talk more, talk more, talk more. For once, he didn't need to say a word. All I had to do was picture my high school destroyed. All the places I made so many memories with friends, gone. Flattened. Nothing. I felt so guilty taking pictures of the damage. People would stare at me like I was a disease. "I know," I thought. I regret doing this just as much as you hate seeing me do it. I need to record these terrible, terrible images and memories for my parents up North to see. They need to see just how lucky they are to still have a daughter. My children will need to see these pictures someday. Whether we are living in Ringgold or Belchertown when we have children, they will need to know the unexplained wrath that can come on any given day, for no particular reason at all.
Do you ever wonder who is 'in charge' of natural disasters? People try to explain them in many different ways. Perhaps it is God, trying to cleanse us because he is upset with how we have been acting lately. I can't blame him for that. Perhaps it's not God vs. Science like we have been taught all these years. Maybe science is something God created. I mean, God can be hard to believe sometimes, but if the best those snooty scientists can come up with is 'the big bang,' then I'm all set believing in a higher power. My biggest fear is that it's not God at all. The more bad things happen, the more I see the devil. It seems like terrible things are happening more often, and that can't be a coincidence. God would never tornado his people intentionally. It has to be the work of the devil. It seems so random, but is it? We will never know. Why all those people in Ringgold, and not us? Why does a tornado destroy everything in its path but spare one random house? We were just a couple miles away. Our house is fine. We don't even have one leaf out of place in our trees. Why were we spared? I haven't slept much in the last week. I can't wrap my head around it. Every time I turn the key and walk into my beautiful, wonderful, untouched home, I feel the most intense guilt I have ever felt in my life. Why do we have a home while so many others now have nothing? Why not me?
Eric and I were with his parents at their house. We kept watching the weather channel. No words were being spoken. We couldn't speak, our jaws were too busy being dropped to the ground because of the images we were seeing. Birmingham, Alabama was next. So much terror everywhere, yet we had not given one thought to the fact that we might be in danger. No, not us. Every storm so far had gone from lower Alabama and traveled over Northwest Georgia into Tennessee. "No," I thought to myself, "We will be fine." I got on the phone and invited friends to come stay with us. "It all seems to be missing us. We still have power, and haven't had a drop of rain. Come on down, we'll keep you all safe." How naive I am. Ugh. My friends arrived and we thought we were going to have a super slumber party. All of a sudden Eric drives quickly up our gravel driveway. I knew it wasn't going to be good before he got inside. He never drives quickly up the driveway because he is so careful about flinging the gravel everywhere. He came inside and told us the news. "The tornado is five minutes away from hitting Ringgold." "What? What do you mean it's actually HERE," I thought. We packed up and went across the street to take refuge in Nana's basement. There we sat for hours, wondering and waiting. Waiting for what? We didn't really know. I nervously word vomited all night because that's what I do when I'm nervous, and when I'm not nervous for that matter. I'm a talker. I can't help myself. I would talk to a wall for days if no one else was around to listen. I don't think silence makes me uncomfortable, I just love conversing with people and making them laugh. The girls were all inside nervously chatting while the brave boys were outside watching the storm pass by. We didn't know it at the time, but what we were watching was the EF tornado travel into Ringgold to destroy it.
I have felt like a nomad down here. I have people that I love and that love me, but I haven't had a sense of belonging to a community. I have such strong roots in my hometown in Belchertown, and I have yet to feel even the smallest inkling of that somewhere else. I am detached from the community of Ringgold, and yet I still struggle to make sense of this tragedy in my head. Eric grew up here. This is his Belchertown. It makes me sick to drive around and see the damage with him. I know he's acting brave for me, but I know how hurt he is inside. This is one time that his silence speaks volumes. I'm always after him to talk more, talk more, talk more. For once, he didn't need to say a word. All I had to do was picture my high school destroyed. All the places I made so many memories with friends, gone. Flattened. Nothing. I felt so guilty taking pictures of the damage. People would stare at me like I was a disease. "I know," I thought. I regret doing this just as much as you hate seeing me do it. I need to record these terrible, terrible images and memories for my parents up North to see. They need to see just how lucky they are to still have a daughter. My children will need to see these pictures someday. Whether we are living in Ringgold or Belchertown when we have children, they will need to know the unexplained wrath that can come on any given day, for no particular reason at all.
Do you ever wonder who is 'in charge' of natural disasters? People try to explain them in many different ways. Perhaps it is God, trying to cleanse us because he is upset with how we have been acting lately. I can't blame him for that. Perhaps it's not God vs. Science like we have been taught all these years. Maybe science is something God created. I mean, God can be hard to believe sometimes, but if the best those snooty scientists can come up with is 'the big bang,' then I'm all set believing in a higher power. My biggest fear is that it's not God at all. The more bad things happen, the more I see the devil. It seems like terrible things are happening more often, and that can't be a coincidence. God would never tornado his people intentionally. It has to be the work of the devil. It seems so random, but is it? We will never know. Why all those people in Ringgold, and not us? Why does a tornado destroy everything in its path but spare one random house? We were just a couple miles away. Our house is fine. We don't even have one leaf out of place in our trees. Why were we spared? I haven't slept much in the last week. I can't wrap my head around it. Every time I turn the key and walk into my beautiful, wonderful, untouched home, I feel the most intense guilt I have ever felt in my life. Why do we have a home while so many others now have nothing? Why not me?
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