Zen and the art of being "Auntie 'Em."

Today: Storm clouds gather in mid to late morning.

It became very quiet then started to rain, moderately for about an hour, then very heavily.

It grew darker.

I knew something substantial was headed our way. I felt it. In my sinuses. My head acts like a barometric bar when there's a rapid change in the weather.

I went online to see why my head was pounding just so.

At around 12:30 P.M. I checked with Weather Underground (Highly recommend for those weather obsessed moments in your life) and sent a concerned email to my husband that I noticed something unusual on the radar headed our way. And I include handy link to a local radar map.

I mention in this hastily written email to my husband that what caught my attention was the sizable pocket of tiny fuscia squares on the radar firmly ensconced within a sizable mass of little red squares. This colorful gathering just crossed over Catalina a bit quicker than I thought it was reasonable. In my humble opinion it seems to be headed over the ocean directly toward us.

I surmised landfall looks to be somewhere between Long Beach and Huntington Beach. You know, where our third grader goes to school. Where we live. Where carpooling was just about to take place.

He seems mildly interested by this information. Perhaps he was just impressed I knew how to email links to local radar maps.

By 1:25 I could see large city garbage cans floating down the sides of our streets like half-sunk toyboats. I marvel objects this utilitarian can appear so graceful in the water.

The street in front of the house tops the sidewalks and trucks seemed to be having trouble passing by. It was, without a doubt, officially now "pouring." The front windows in the living room could have use windshield wipers. The color of the sky went from gray to very-dark-gray.

I watch more garbage bags float by and wondered if there would be a story about weather calamities happening on the same day a Garbage Pick-Up Day. How inconvenient. It was a wet, cold mess. Even Travis Bickle would be impressed.

Then, hear thunder and the distant wail of sirens. Just when it seems to be at it's most dramatic, the phone calls start to come in. Not from humans, that would have been less alarming. No, this is a series of automated emergency alerts from the city of Westminster, from the Los Alamitos School District declaring there was a tornado alert in Seal Beach (LAUSD) and that all the children in school are now in lock down. "In lock down?" I'm so relieved.

What really scares me the most was that right then, right at 1:30 I knew my other daughter was about leave her school to get into a carpool headed several miles across Orange County, from Santa Ana to where we live just below Seal Beach right at that moment. What frightens me is her safety on the roads just then.

Normally, I don't trust other drivers in California, especially when it's raining. Let alone raining like this. We don't get weather for years in Southern California, then when we do it all seems to arrive within an hour and a half.

Then it hits me: I can't do anything to protect anyone. I mean, big deal, people have gotten this newsflash plenty of times before, but I realize just how uncomfortable I am with this one reality. My kids are everything to me. Trusting others with their safety is an art I've yet to master.

Television news and the automated weather warnings come in fast now from both our city and my children's school district. Three, four, five calls. What was I supposed to do about this tornado alert? My kids were not with me. Was I supposed to fly there? Crawl into the root cellar and wait for Dorothy to get home safely?

Clearly this was an "Auntie Em" moment. I had so much more empathy today for poor "Aunty Em" for having to go down into that root cellar knowing Dorothy wasn't there with them. Why didn't I notice the horror of this moment before?

I realized then, that we just do not have any control over anything and to pretend we do at all is simply a necessary illusion. We don't have control over much, actually.

We have to just give it up and trust the universe to protect our loved ones because we can't do it all. This is all part of the zen of motherhood: Learning when to reach out and protect and when to just let it go. Learning how to coast along hoping everyone knows what they're doing because you don't have much power, after all.

Not that I'm complaining.

Not with Haiti. Not with our world currently as shaken and in tatters as it is these days, but again, I was reminded: We are not in charge.

I know I don't have a clue what real fear and trauma is like, but, it was a sharp reminder that we really control little to nothing.

And that when having to rely on "the kindness of strangers" is most pressing, it is then that we need some kind of familiarity the most.

"Auntie Em" has my respect today.