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GRIEGO: Shaving away chaos after tornado

By Tina Griego, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

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

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Jeremy Kennis shaves his beard as Cornerstone Drive neighbors Ceci Barnhill, 9, Katie Zrubek, 8, Jenny Zrubek, 10, and Kennis' daughter, Ally Kennis, 8, watch after getting a chance to help with a razor Sunday in Windsor. After a tornado in May, Kennis decided not to shave until he and his family moved back into their tornado-ravaged home. The family moved in last Friday.

Photo by Matt Mcclain / The Rocky

Jeremy Kennis shaves his beard as Cornerstone Drive neighbors Ceci Barnhill, 9, Katie Zrubek, 8, Jenny Zrubek, 10, and Kennis' daughter, Ally Kennis, 8, watch after getting a chance to help with a razor Sunday in Windsor. After a tornado in May, Kennis decided not to shave until he and his family moved back into their tornado-ravaged home. The family moved in last Friday.

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They get the floors stripped, resanded and restained and the walls painted and the carpet down. They finish the tile work in the bathroom, hang the light fixtures, refinish the antique kitchen table, buy some kitchen chairs and a new living room set.

You'd think that last part, the shopping, would be fun, Jeremy Kennis says, but it turns out walking through acres of furniture in a giant warehouse for hours at a time has a funny way of making everything look the same and nothing look good.

Four trips, and he and Molly find something they like, all the time thinking, "We just want our old stuff back." Of course, that wasn't happening. They tossed the old stuff into a dumpster right after the tornado hit town on May 20. The winds whipped insulation, glass and Lord knows what through the air. Monster vomit, a neighbor called it.

Three months and eight days. That's how long the Kennises were out of the house. Three months and eight days during which Cornerstone Drive slowly began its return to life. The old man across the street, Bill, moved back just a few weeks after the storm hit. A couple of other neighbors on their end of Cornerstone returned in August.

The house isn't quite ready on Friday when Molly and Jeremy Kennis decide it's time to go back home. Heck with it, they say. They pack a couple duffel bags with clothes. It's desolate on the street at night, quiet, dark, empty houses sitting there. No porch lights. No lights coming through the windows.

The next morning, Jeremy takes some trash outside. He stands there in his front yard, in pajama bottoms, holding his cup of coffee, and he looks around his neighborhood, suddenly feeling mighty good.

It's 8 a.m., and there's Mike from down the street and good ol' Bill, and Jeremy shouts, "Hey, neighbors," and doesn't that feel good, too.

Bill takes in the pajama-clad Jeremy with his coffee cup and says, teasing, "Now, don't you guys be raising any ruckus now. It's been nice and quiet around here."

Depending upon which side of the fence you're standing, three months and eight days seems like an eternity or like, well, three months and eight days. No one here is going to tell you time has flown by, though each day since the tornado barreled through Windsor has been full to brimming. School has started now and people long ago fell into regular routines.

I have to ask Jeremy how much time has passed because I have little concept of it. Down here in Denver, aside from the big Democratic party last week, we do the same things as the people in Windsor do. Go to work. Take care of the kids. Only most of us do that from our own homes, and many of them don't.

If you're keeping track of the four families I've been following (somewhat sporadically) through reconstruction, the Kennises are the first to return home to Cornerstone Drive. Their home suffered the least damage. The others are in various stages of reconstruction. Jim and Maggie Barnhill are shooting for a Thanksgiving return.

Mike and Kathy Zrubek remain in limbo, their lot still empty save the garage. On Sunday, they come by to say hello to the Ken nises. As happy as they are for the Kennises, it's a reminder of how slow their own progress has been. No change since June, Mike says, I'm having a hard time with it.

The home of the fourth family, Ken Coffman and Cheryl Green, has also been standing, unchanged, for some time. The siding is gone. So are the shingles. It looks naked.

It's a basic human reaction to try to bring order to the aftermath of chaos. It's not simply a matter of rebuilding, which is necessity - where else will they live - but how one rebuilds, the small acts of restoring equilibrium that reclaim life. Everything is upside down, and so I will do this and this and this to make sense of it.

It may not make sense to people looking in, but then such acts often have private meaning and are shaped by a sense of ritual. So, you may look at Maggie Barnhill's house and note she has painted the front door red and think nothing of it. But she draws from that color an old meaning, one of sanctuary. To her, it symbolizes safety and refuge.

Then there is the matter of Jeremy's beard.

He decided he would not shave until the family moved back into the house. This news was not received, shall we say, enthusiastically by his wife, Molly, but he nonetheless persevered. He trimmed the beard only to maintain some appearance of a civilized man and to ensure Molly would not stop kissing him altogether.

On Sunday, after two nights in the house, he declares it's time to shave. A stool is brought to the front yard, and the family gathers, including his parents and in-laws and the kids, Ally and Jaden, and some of the neighbors' kids, too. Without further ado, the kids take the clippers to Dad. When they are done, he pulls out the shaving cream and shaves off the rest. OK, now I'll kiss you, Molly says. Everyone cheers. No one liked the beard.

"Ah," he says, patting his face, "it feels good to be home."