Director’s note.
The greatest intellectual and emotional nourishment I’ve received since having my son (who is nearing 3), was on a recent trip to my home-state of Wisconsin to visit my maternal grandmother, Mary Lynn before her death this past September.
At 82 she lived a long and vibrant life, a waitress and mother of 6. I spent my teenage years living with her in her charming trailer, with each of us trading shifts at a diner down the street. The memories are sweet and specific.
In December of 2016, right after Trump was elected, she lost my mother Jackie. A few years later, her daughter Mary, and soon after her son, Allen. Her will to sustain all that loss astounded me.
I spent the last evening of that trip with my Aunt Kathleen, Mary Lynn’s youngest daughter, a beautiful woman only a year older than I. There was a tornado passing through and we spent an hour huddled in the hallway of our hotel. A baby who had just learned to walk made steps up and down the rows of people flanking the walls.
This was Kathleen’s first Tornado. Having been adopted by my Grandmother’s first love, she lived her life on the bay in Boston where she hadn’t ever seen the wide-sky development of a classic twister. I recollected to her a time when Mary Lynn and I sat in the hallway of her trailer, repeating Hail Marys as a tornado hit a house across the street from us. We lived safely through that one too.
I made this film for Mary Lynn in 2022 but oddly never showed it to her.
I hope you will enjoy it.
Mary Lynn, Florida Keys on vacation