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Help Tim & Rebekah Nyquist with Tornado Recovery

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**“Listen, buddy, we’re gonna go outside now. I’m gonna carry you and we’re gonna run. We’re gonna run as fast as we can, but you’re not going to look at the house, okay? You’re gonna look at me. Just look at me, okay?”**


The kids have admittedly had a rough day. They hadn’t slept much the night before and by the time we’d gotten ice cream and then reached the park, exhaustion was setting in. Olive was upset with Ephram for running away too fast during tag. Ephram was upset because he wanted to go for a walk in the woods, but Olive didn’t. Rebekah and I were beat. Olive started panicking because she needed to use the bathroom so Rebekah took her while I stood by and watched Ephram continue to play. As Rebekah and Olive approached after she was finished, I signaled to Ephram that it was time to go. He asked why and I pointed upward. The storm clouds were rolling in fast and I didn’t like the way they looked. Something about it felt unsettling.


**“I don’t want to go out there, daddy, please. I’m scared.”


“I know you’re scared, buddy,” I tell him, my hands cupping his little face while he shakes uncontrollably, “so I’m gonna carry you. I’ve got you. I’m gonna keep you safe. I promise.”**


After returning home from the park, Rebekah turned the TV on to the Olympics coverage as we settled in on the couch and tried our best to unwind from a long day. The kids took a bath, washing away the exhaustion. The clouds outside had crept in and it looked like the sun had set hours ago despite still being an hour away. A weather warning scrolled across the bottom of the screen and the power in the house began to flicker. Rain poured down and the tornado siren blared through the streets while Ephram panicked, asking if this was just one of those Saturday afternoon tests. Rebekah and I exchanged glances as we looked to the windows where the rain fell harder, faster. No, we told him. This one is real. We assured him it wouldn’t hit us. Tornadoes never hit us. We’re safe.


**His head is buried in my chest as we run through the pouring rain, dodging the tree limbs and falling debris. I’m reminded for a moment of the sailing advice my grandfather had once given me: “You have to practice capsizing, Tim. Eventually it will happen so it’s better to be prepared in a practice run than to to confront it in open water.”**


The power flickered on and off as the winds whipped harder. I felt myself backing away from the kitchen doorwall slowly, a creeping realization of vulnerability settling in as I thought of that scene in The Lost World when Kelly begins to panic as the night sets in and the dinosaurs roam the earth, “I want to be somewhere high.” Excepting that in this case I wanted to be somewhere low; anywhere low enough to escape what felt like an inevitability. That wasn’t an option in this house, though. It had never been an issue before and now that it was I could hear my heart pounding in my chest and screaming at me that I should have done something, anything, to prevent the impossibility of escape.


“I think we should get in the bathroom now,” Rebekah said, breaking my chain of thought. She carried Ephram into the tub as I looked at her and, in the same moment I decided to nod in agreement, the inevitable caught up with me. Have you ever been in a car accident before? Watched someone die in front of you? Witnessed a tragedy you are powerless to stop? Have you ever noticed that, when it happens, for just a moment you freeze in place as if time has stopped moving altogether and there is only this moment and you and you’ll never truly walk away from it ever again because it has imprinted itself upon you and you will carry it always? It’s common, that reaction. Common and natural. I can see it very clearly when I close my eyes, but I don’t really have to do that because it’s playing on a perpetual loop at all times. I’m looking at Rebekah and then turning my head just in time to see a giant tree falling on top of my car in the driveway, smashing it so hard it momentarily lifts in the air and crashes back down again. That same moment I am watching the tree crash into the roof while siding falls from above and scatters across the deck. A split second later, as if there were a momentary delay in impact, the entire house shudders and shakes as frames fall from the walls. As my eyes shift upward, I can see the ceiling literally drop as the house continues to shake and my immediate thought is that there is nowhere to run. This is my end, I think. This is the end of my family. They will find us buried in the rubble and folks will call it senseless and they’ll be right. The ceiling is going to fall in on me, my wife, and my children, and that is going to be the end of it. All I can do is scream from my gut in the horrific realization that our lives are over.


Except that they’re not. A moment passes and the house is still shaking but I realize I’m not dead yet. I look down at my three year old daughter, gripping the couch and wide eyed with fear, and I scoop her up so quickly I’m almost sure I’ve left an outline of her behind. As I’m running into the bathroom I can hear and feel the house shake and Rebekah is sitting in the tub with our son who is screaming in sheer terror while she begs God to please just let us live.


**Ephram is soaked in my arms as I arrive at the front yard where the kids helped decorate the deck for Halloween last fall, pieces of the faux purple webbing still lingering like an outcast spirit. Instead I’m met by a gaping hole in the house filled with the massive branches of a White Oak, a sight which one can’t help but pause to stop and emit that old phrase of the lost and found, lovers and broken-hearted, believers and faithless alike:


“Oh my god.”**


As we’re huddled together in that little tub while what sounds like a war zone outside the door continues unabated, someone begins pounding at our door. Rebekah runs to go see who it is and I hold my trembling children while I do my best not to give credence to the thought that this might be the last time I see her. It’s our neighbors across the street come to make sure we’re okay. They knew we were home. I wonder for a moment what they might have expected to find. They tell us to hurry and get out of the house, to come to theirs as soon as we can. Rebekah returns to the bathroom and reports to me, as if in a fugue state, “our car is gone.” I nod in a similar state of understanding. We quickly get the kids out of the bathroom and I meet Rebekah and the neighbors at the door. As I’m walking I notice the water is pouring into the house. I look outside to see the carnage and then my gaze returns to the water rapidly pooling from the ceiling as if suddenly noticing it for the first time. “Rebekah…oh god.” Her gaze meets mine and we allow ourselves a second to fall apart before we collect ourselves again. The human body is an amazing thing. Rebekah runs to get some things for the kids and I take Ephram and Olive to the back door. Outside, a wire is hanging low to the ground and debris is everywhere.


“Listen, buddy,” I say quickly and directly, “we’re gonna go outside now…”


Later that night, as we walk in defeat to my mother in-law’s car, Ephram sees the house for the first time. He stops in the street and sobs. He’ll be six in October. The day he was born he’d been in the birthing canal for too long and the doctors were concerned about his breathing. They set him on the table nearby where he screamed in terror. “Go see him,” Rebekah tells me.


People always say a man becomes a father the moment their child is born. For me, I always think of this as the moment. I walk to the table where he is crying out in fear and sit down next to him. He stares up at the ceiling, shivering and cold while the nurses try to calm him. I stare at him, this marvelous little thing who carries my blood and my name and will one day tell stories about me and live a life full of wonders yet uncovered.


“Ephram. Buddy. Ephram.”


He gets quiet, eyes opening as he searches the room for the source. “Hi buddy. It’s okay.”


Finding me, he turns his head, silent as a stone, and just stares at me. It’s in this moment I understand he knows my voice. He knows my voice and he feels safe. So he just looks.


“Hi bud. I’m your daddy.”


I hold my finger out and he wraps his little palm around it. “Yeah. I’m your daddy. I’m gonna keep you safe. I promise.”


He sits with me on the couch tonight watching a movie in silence. His whole world has been disrupted and the future is uncertain, but he’s here on the couch next to me and he is safe and for now that is enough. He moves closer to me, wrapping his arms through mine and resting his head against it. The whole world has gone quiet and it feels as if it should always be this way. I am here. I can feel his pulse and rhythmic breathing and he smiles when I ask if he likes the movie.


I am here. We are safe. And that’s enough.

Donate

Donations 

  • Matthew Gates
    • $250 
    • 2 yrs
  • Dan Nyquist
    • $150 
    • 3 yrs
  • Saori Miya
    • $50 
    • 3 yrs
  • Gayle Geisenhoff
    • $100 
    • 3 yrs
  • Anonymous
    • $100 
    • 3 yrs
Donate

Organizer and beneficiary

Kristine Hunt
Organizer
Canton Township, MI
Rebekah Gill
Beneficiary

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