>The Big One

Severe weather doesn’t really alarm me. I grew up, after all, in Georgia, where crashing spring thunderstorms were routine, moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where I faced hurricanes on an almost annual basis, and now live in Nashville, part of what’s commonly referred to as Tornado Alley.

We get The Works three or four times a year: high winds, lots of lightning and thunder, and tornado watches all over the region. Occasionally, one touches down out in the sticks somewhere, knocking out a mobile home or a few cows. Luckily, my neighborhood is built at the base of an enormous, craggy hill, which I think accounts for why we never lose so much as a Bradford Pear on our street, even when surrounding areas look like an enormous Weather Baby crawled through and pulled everything he could find to chew on out of the ground.

Still, when severe weather strikes, I always give our tiny guest bathroom a casual glance. Windowless and located in the absolute center of our house, it’s the obvious tornado shelter of the joint, although I shudder to think of actually trying to fit six people in it. A few times when especially bad storms have rolled through the area, I’ve put a flashlight in there, just in case. Once, I even put in a six-pack of water and some granola bars. I’ve never actually gone in there, though, and prepared for the worst.

Until last night.

I was sitting in Starbucks, watching lightning streak across the sky outside and chuckling at a few stormchasers who’d dropped by when one of the baristas informed me that the Big One was scheduled to arrive in about 17 minutes. Casually, I sighed, drove home, and turned on the television. On the weather radar was an image of the most badass, potentially tornadic system I’d ever seen. And it was headed right for our house.

Breathless, I went upstairs and told the girls to come down, pronto. Then, I went to Bruiser and Punky’s room, woke them up, and took them into the bathroom. The older girls and my husband stood just ouside, with the idea that they’d run into the closet-sized room at the last minute if they had to.

Within a few minutes, the wind had started blowing, hard. We heard hail start to fall, which isn’t that unusual, but this hail sounded much larger than any I’d heard here before. Hubs opened the back door to look and heard trees cracking in the forest behind our house. I looked at my little ones and tried to imagine what I’d do if a tornado hit. I’d have to try and wrap my body both around the sleeping Bruiser and Punky.

“If I tell you to, I want you to go and sit right there,” I told Punky, smiling and pointing at a little space under the pedestal sink. I figured that would give her a little extra protection and I could sort of cram myself over them both.

Meanwhile, the voices of the weather people on television had risen, nervously urging everyone in our area to turn up the TV and take cover. We waited as the lightning flashed and the thunder rumbled and the wind blew all around our house. And after what seemed like a small eternity, it got quiet outside.

“It’s over,” Hubs announced, pointing at the television screen, which showed that the storm had moved on through Nashville. I exhaled and put the kids back to bed.

We were lucky. But about ten minutes down the road from our neighborhood, 30 homes were leveled. 20 people were killed in this area alone, 30 statewide. For all of these people, yesterday was probably a pretty ordinary day. But things can change in an instant.

It’s something I want to remember, particularly during those times in which my life seems overly mundane and ordinary. Because the truth is, I’ll take all the laundry and the endless picture book-reading and chauffering duties in the world, just to have a family that’s intact and healthy and safe.

Using your guest bathroom as a storm shelter while a tornado whirls by will do that to you.

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.