My mother just sensed something was wrong. Moms have that sixth sense, you know.
She was in her nightgown, drinking her morning coffee and balancing her checkbook when a chill hit her body. The time was 8:06 am, on an unusually muggy January morning in Mississippi. My younger brother opened his new Planet of the Apes puzzle and mimicked monkey sounds while the local radio station played the latest hit songs from 1975. Dad was at work in Magnolia while I sat in class in east McComb. Mom did her usual mental checklist, a multi-tasking feat of reassuring herself that her loved ones were safe while simultaneously matching entries in her check register with her bank statement. At that moment, a silent bell rang loud in her cerebrum, and she turned to look through the kitchen’s sliding glass doors at the threatening skies and horizontal rain. The house was quiet, but a soft voice said, “Go.”
Almost trance-like, Mom jumped up from her chair, ran to the den, swooped up her preschool son and ran down the hallway. In these precious seconds, everything changed. The nails in the house screeched as they were pulled from the lumber frame. The air pressure suddenly dropped, and Mom’s ears popped. The deafening sound of a freight train invaded our home, and as Mom rushed to the hallway closet, the south wall where my brother played exploded into a whirlwind of brick and wood.
In this weather attack, Mom managed to get into the closet, shield her child, and maintain a death grip on the doorknob as the house shook, rattled, and then splintered around her. Then, as quick as the nightmare began, it ended and what remained was an eerie silence, broken first by my brother looking up at what was the ceiling and saying, “Momma, I can see the sky!” When mother and child stepped from the closet, they saw total destruction, as though Godzilla’s foot had stomped on their home on his northeastern march through McComb. Realizing a powerful tornado had just obliterated everything she and Dad owned, all Mom could do was wrap her arms around my brother, hold him tight, and sob tears of relief that they were saved.
Weeks later, once the phone lines were restored, the phone rang and a stranger from the outskirts of Pike County, some 15 miles away, asked if he had reached the residence of Larry and Pat Hicks. My mom affirmed he had the right home at which time he said he had a fascinating story to tell. The day before, he had been walking in his pasture and found a check register in our family name with the last date entry of January 10, 1975. Yes, this person found the last item mom touched before leaping from her chair to save my brother from serious injury or worse. In that brief phone call, Mom felt her sixth sense tingle again, and she knew everything would be ok. Thank God for Moms, our protectors.
Clark Hicks is a lawyer who lives in Hattiesburg. His email is clark@hicksattorneys.com.
