The Rainbow Connection

For reasons I am really not sure of in retrospect, my friend Wes and I were obsessed with the James Cameron film Titanic when it was released ten years ago. We paid admission to see that film over and over and over. There’s a line at the beginning of that film, where one of the guys on the boat, speaking of Rose Dawson says, “Then she marries this guy named Calvert, they move to Cedar Rapids and she punches out a couple of kids. Now Calvert's dead, and from what I hear Cedar Rapids is dead!” After I had decided to attend Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, Wes took great joy in tormenting me with that line. Certainly, on the surface, Cedar Rapids didn’t have much to offer an eighteen year old, but I had a good scholarship and a college that seemed like a nice fit for a shy young woman who was looking for a fresh start.

Moving to Cedar Rapids was one of the best choices I ever made. I met my husband Ben at that college, another transplant who claimed Omaha as his hometown. Together we poked fun at the Cedar Rapids community – its street grid set up along a diagonal, its fifth season and all the explanations of what this mystery season is, the smells that waft through this industrial city. But ten years later, with only a slight sabbatical, we are still making those same jokes as we establish our first home in the Cedar Rapids / Iowa City Corridor.

This past week I was in Omaha. Life there has certainly not been easy as that community has faced two devastating tornados within four days. On a personal level, it has been a rough week for my family – a series of minor misfortunes only added to the more pressing needs of dealing with the serious tornado damage to my brother’s home and the major surgery my niece Emily underwent. But through it all, I started to hear stories of levees breaking, towns and neighborhoods being evacuated, and I received urgent emails from my University department urging me and my colleagues to empty out our offices and mailboxes and pleading for help sandbagging. I became glued to my laptop and cell phone, trying to find out anything I could about the state of things in Eastern Iowa. When levees starting breaking in Des Moines, I realized I was facing the possibility of being separated from my home, husband, and dog. I couldn’t face another week of watching my world float away via the internet.

I don’t think the full impact of the eastern Iowa floods came to me until I was nearing the I-380 exit on I-80. I was able to find a radio station that was broadcasting the audio from one of the local television stations. There were showing a boat tour of the Czech Village area, and even though I couldn’t see the images, their conversation was enough to make me realize the devastation. For the first time since everything had started to unfold, I started weeping. I suddenly realize that although Ben and I poke fun at eastern Iowa, it has been the place we’ve called home for nearly a third of our lives. Unlike other recent tragedies, this one was not taking place in some distant city. It was affecting our dearest friends, our mentors, our faith communities, and our colleagues. The college campus where we meet, invented silly schemes with friends, and had our first kiss was now housing the National Guard. The public library where we performed children’s plays and the Paramount theatre where we had received our diplomas were submerged in water. The kind people who rescued the chocolate lab who has become our furry child in the past nine months were now trying to save hundreds of Sullies who could not go with their owners when they evacuated their homes. Then they spoke of Iowa City – the lovely college town that has so nicely lent itself to life we have built in our first three years of marriage. They spoke of the sandbagging volunteers and the water levels that were expected to overwhelm the buildings that I have worked in and walked past everyday as I have started my teaching career. I realized that Cedar Rapids and Iowa City have been the setting for so many of the transformative experiences in our lives, and it was heartbreaking to hear about these overwhelmed communities.

As I considered these things, I looked up to the sky and saw the faintest of rainbows. All those Sunday school lessons about God’s promise returned to me. Maybe its cheesy, but in that moment I felt an incredible amount of hope. It’s probably no accident that it was right after I noticed the rainbow that I passed the Johnson county line – the county that includes Iowa City and our home, North Liberty. Ben and I talk about how some times we can see life changing moments as pictures and how we wished we had a camera to capture these visions. I wish I could have captured that sign framed by the rainbow. It was a certain sign that Cedar Rapids, and Iowa City for that matter, were not dead and that hope and home lay ahead.