^{East side of The Square. The Uptown Cafe, next to King Appliance, has the best cheap breakfast in town.}

On Wednesday night, a swirling stew of wind and hail and sky roared down from the sky and onto the north end of Kirksville, Missouri.

I call Kirksville my hometown on occasions when somebody asks where I'm from, and it's clear they don't really care what the "true" answer is. In the same way we have one family by merit of birth, and another family we choose because we have grown to love and cherish them, I have two hometowns.

The one I was raised in, and the one that raised me.

In ten thousand meaningful ways, Kirksville is the place where I grew up. Three times over. First as a scholarshipped undergraduate, plucked miraculously from a working-class background and set on a road that didn't exist where I was born. Later, too, as the working spouse of somebody who followed a similar path out of one life, into another. And finally, the last time, as a graduate student, earning the extra two letters that go behind my name and somehow convince people that I am more competent than I may in fact really be.  

Kirksville is a place where a frightened, lost girl without a real home became whole again. It sheltered and nurtured her, protected and educated her, surrounded her with a tight-knit group of loving new friends, and gave her the experiences that became the core of herself.

I got the first inkling something was amiss through Facebook. Adam, a much beloved and much missed English professor (on whose front porch we frequently downed more Jameson's and smoked more cigarettes than I care to try to quantify, talking late into the night about language and art and literature and poverty and intelligence and life and love and the universe and everything) updated his status.

"Receiving news about Kirksville via national news. CNN. KTVO is not broadcasting."

Adam still lives in Kirksville. I frantically raced to CNN.com.

Tornadoes. Deaths. Homes destroyed.

Here's one stormchaser video.

And while there's no embedding possible, here's a video by another guy who got WAY, WAY too close.

The late evening seemed normal enough until the storm crept over us, like a deadly stalker.

^{Two days ago: A home no more than 1/4 mile from the condo complex where I lived during graduate school.}

^{The auto dealership where my first husband and I were finally able to buy our first truly reliable used car.}

There is a Facebook App for the tens of thousands of us who've spent a few years as students in Kirksville. One university is a highly ranked public liberal arts institution; and the other is a medical school situated in the birthplace of osteopathic medicine. (Look though you might, you won't find an MD in Kirksville. DOs are the only brand out there.)

Through "Pieces of Kirksville," we graduates and alumni and friends and yes, even the people who still live there can trade tiny bits of nostalgia. 

• Denise sent Kyle a Pancake City.
• Scott sent Denise a Too Talls.
• Denise sent Ellen and Scott a View of Thousand Hills Lake.
• Kyle sent Denise a Sunken Garden, Truman State University.

These past few days, I've winced at the name "Pieces of Kirksville," because I've seen too many pieces in photos on news sites.

My first Kirksville friends scattered in 1990. Remembering the months leading up to graduation can still bring tears if I'm not careful; we were as close as family, and we knew we were coming up on the end. That we'd never, ever all be together again. This was it. A death of sorts.

I cried more in the two weeks before I left Kirksville (the first time) than I ever have in another two-week period before or since. I was losing everybody who'd helped me grow up.

We promised to stay in touch. Some did. Most didn't.

Ellen, the best friend a girl could ever hope to have, lives in Japan; Kyle is in Chicago; Michael U. went back to Turkey; Kerry is in Nebraska. I keep track of them on Facebook and through email. I don't know what ever happened to Mark (the first man I was ever engaged to marry), or Doug or Kelly or Clarissa or Tish or Steve.

I've also lost one or two forever. Mel, a brilliant thinker and tender friend, never without a timely Zappa quotes or a hip flask of bourbon, died more than ten years ago. I've also seen obituaries for undergraduate professors other than P. (although I never took a class from P., I still classify him that way--a prof--even though, one drunken night late in the 80s, I confess I discovered he was a very aggressive and not-so-terrible kisser).

I don't feel old enough to have dead professors.

I went back to Kirksville just a couple of years ago, on a blazingly short day trip. It's continued to grow up, too. Everything changes. An entire block of buildings on the town square had been demolished and turned into a multiplex (!). The most popular "frat bar" in town had burned down; the owner is in jail for arson.

The trees on the quad were larger, leafier. The new buildings on campus were strange, alien. The gumtree was gone. (This was a lonely oak on the quad that, for some reason, collected pieces of gum of every hue over the course of the years. Truth be told, it was disgusting, but it was MY disgusting, and I loved it.)

Nobody was on campus. No students, no faculty. It felt like visiting a grave.

When I saw Adam's update on Wednesday evening, my heart tightened. For those who are still there, and for those who aren't anymore. For him and Andrea, for Linda and Monica and Julia, for Bill and Dr. Bob and Dennis and all the gorgeous souls who touched my life. And for the town itself, always so generous to us, the transient students, who came and left, like the ebb and flow of a tide.

I hope the town's rebuilding goes as well as mine did.