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GRIEGO: Tornado is past; trauma isn't

By Tina Griego, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published August 4, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Riley Barnhill, 6, swings from a tree as Christian Roby, 9, jumps for a branch Friday, the final day of Camp Noah at Bethel Lutheran Church in Windsor. The camp helps children deal with natural disasters.

Photo by Matt McClain / The Rocky

Riley Barnhill, 6, swings from a tree as Christian Roby, 9, jumps for a branch Friday, the final day of Camp Noah at Bethel Lutheran Church in Windsor. The camp helps children deal with natural disasters.

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Here's the fact about the aftermath of natural disaster: Houses can be rebuilt. Businesses can be reopened.

Level-headedness springs from the ruins of an upside-down world. Gratitude undercuts sorrow. Stuff, as Cornerstone Drive resident Maggie Barnhill says, is just stuff. What was once defined as irreplaceable is redefined at the sight of one's own child, unscratched.

Here's another equally obvious fact: Unscratched does not equal untouched.

The townspeople worry now about their children. The mayor recalls seeing the child of a friend melt down on a windy night.

He worries about the kids' return to school. The tornado struck on the last day of school, and the children huddled in hallways and restrooms and from there, as 7-year-old Ally Kennis would later write, "we heard the sound of the hail coming down from the sky." The mayor heard some teachers told frightened kids it was only a drill, and while he doesn't want to second- guess them, he wonders what's going to happen the next time there is, in fact, a drill.

Let's go back to the house to do some work, a parent will say, and depending on the day, the child will come along with little comment or will wail, tears threatening, no, I don't want to go back to the broken house. "The broken house" is the description the Cornerstone Drive children use. Once invoked, it is only a matter of time that a tummy ache will follow.

The kids are fine most of the time; resiliency is childhood's gift. Some children have rebounded with ease. But separation anxiety strikes without warning, and when the clouds roll in, anxiety spikes. No doubt this is still happening among adults as well, but children are less inhibited. Their little bodies tighten and their eyes grow wide. It's just a little rain, honey, their parents will say.

But the kids tremble, so taut they remind me of rabbits, frozen on the landscape, certain a predator has drawn near.

The parents of Cornerstone Drive, not sure how to handle all this anxiety, put their kids in Camp Noah. It's a weeklong Bible camp to help children cope with the anxiety caused by natural disaster. The good people of Lutheran Disaster Response and Lutheran Family Services follow the nation's fires and the floods, the tornadoes and the hurricanes.

Children, they say, let us tell you a story of a man named Noah and a great flood. In this way, they walk the children through disaster, preparation, evacuation and transition to new life.

All eight children of the Cornerstone Drive families I have met this summer attend the camp.

Five of the eight were home when the tornado struck. One moment they're outside, collecting baseball-sized hail to put in the freezer. The next, they're in the basement tub praying, which is what the four Zrubek kids did. Next door, 6-year-old Riley Barnhill hunkered with his mother, Maggie, in the basement. We're going to die, mom. No, she said, we're safe, we're safe.

The parents try to stay patient in the face of their children's continuing fears. But in the stress of rebuilding, frustration rides hard upon sympathy. Ally Kennis took scissors to her hair; Riley Barnhill keeps crawling into his parents' bed. No, Riley, his mother says, you need to sleep in your own bed, bud.

But the people at the camp tell Maggie that Riley, 7 years old tomorrow, is at the age where he is beginning to understand loss can be permanent.

It's typical they say, for children to regress after a trauma. He'll stop once he feels confident again, they tell her.

About 50 kids attend the camp at Bethel Lutheran Church. They meet every day for a week to play games and sing songs and makes arts and crafts.

Some of the teachers are crisis counselors from Colorado Spirit, a local outreach team paid for by FEMA to help families in the tornado zone through next summer. (The team also will give a presentation to schoolteachers a week before school starts.)

Camp staff hands out official emergency-preparedness backpacks, and the children take them home and pack them with toothbrushes and flashlights and candy and toys.

When I show up on Friday, the last day of camp, 8-year-old Katie Zrubek runs to greet me. She's had a tough time of it, but she tells me she's doing much better.

Look, she tells me, holding out a piece of orange construction paper.

In neat printing, she has written: Flexibility and patience help during a transition.

Jeremy Kennis tells me a story: Just before camp started, when his wife, Molly, was out with a friend, it started to rain.

It was a pretty good rainstorm, Jeremy says. "It was really pouring and thundering and Ally was holding on to my shirt, staying right by my side wherever I went, and Jaden was just really sullen, sitting on his bed with his blankie. Then the wind started blowing, and they started crying and really freaking out."

They were at the rental house and the kids started saying, we should go to the basement, Dad.

"I didn't know what to do. 'It's just a storm, kids,' I kept saying. So, we went out to the garage and I opened the door so we could look out the rain, and the kids are still freaking out, 'we should go to the basement, Dad.' "

So, Jeremy pulled off his T-shirt and took off his shoes and went running out in the rain. Look, he called back to them, it's OK, and he splashed in the puddles. Come on out, he said. He ran back up to them, hugging Ally and 5-year-old Jaden to his side. Together, they walked into the rain.

"They were apprehensive at first, but then they started running back and forth and laughing, and we were splashing, and it was like they forgot all about what they were scared of."

He tells me he's not sure if it was the right thing to do but says it seemed right at the time. It strikes me as one of those moments when the demands of parenting suddenly draw together in sharp relief.

You try to be a good teacher; you try to make them feel safe; you do the best you can.

It's a good story, and the picture stays with me a long time: a father and his children laughing in the rain, trying to find their way back to normal.

griegot@RockyMountainNews.com

Comments

  • August 4, 2008

    7:36 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Mike_In_Hartsel writes:

    Good grief. Griego promotes wallowing in the past. It happened, move on. Get over it.

  • August 4, 2008

    10:23 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    arby writes:

    Mikey
    She is not wallowing in the past at all. She is telling a continuing story.
    Why don't you get over it? If you can't. Quit reading her columns and posting your stupid stuff.

  • August 5, 2008

    6:29 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Mike_In_Hartsel writes:

    It happened, move on. Get over it