Not the post I expected

I was thinking that this first post would be full of lovely pictures of what I'm working on right now, and my thoughts, and introduction to the quilt sphere. I was wrong.

You see, on Saturday, as my mother and I pulled into our driveway and parked, she paused, and asked "What do I hear?"

Those are the scariest words in the English language when you realize what you both hear is a freight train, and there are no train tracks within 30 miles of you. We had no time to get out of the car and run for the house, so we hunkered down, covered our heads and prayed like there was no tomorrow, because there was a good chance there might not be.

We made it, though. My father had been standing in the back door, wondering if he could hold the car down if it started to move. Luckily, it didn't. Luckily, our two dogs, Samwise and Bombadil, were terrified, but unscathed out in their pen. My favorite tree, a huge black walnut, missed them by a few feet.

Once we were safely inside, my father rushed out to check on the neighbors. His quick thinking, and that of the two boys next door, saved a life. Our new neighbor and her husband had been home when their trailer was hit head on. My father and friends managed to pull her out, though her husband was not as lucky. He was a good man, who loved his wife and children to an immense degree, and I know he's thankful, wherever he is, that they're alright.

I suppose I can tie this back to quilting by saying that the rest of that night I spent in our dark kitchen with my parents, watching the emergency vehicles on the road beside us, wrapped up tightly in my first real quilt, a Civil War Soldier quilt from an old American Patchwork and Quilting, shaking like a leaf, crying, but knowing that there was definitely someone watching out for us.

I have to thank all of our friends and neighbors for pulling together, from those first few seconds afterward, to now, as they get a chainsaw gang together to start clearing and picking up the pieces. I haven't put too much thought into it just yet, but I think this experience calls for a quilt to commemorate all of the love and fellowship we all spread around our little corner of the world in the aftermath of this tragedy.