They say tornadoes sound like a giant freight train. Or a massive swarm of bees. A loud, vocal warning of highly destructive power. Hurricanes lash out, pulverize towns like a garbage disposal, washing lives down the drain with a flood of water. A funnel drops from an ominous, boiling cloud, but there are signs before it carves its deadly path into the earth; the uptake of vapor into the greedy storm cell, the unease in the atmosphere. We can study the sky, watch for the hints that earth has decided to declare war on humanity once again, and then, marshal our forces against nature...or retreat.

We are given a choice in our destiny.

I didn't get that choice. My son, my newborn daughter, they didn't get a choice. The hundreds of thousands of Japanese who now are missing their lives, children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, villages, they didn't get a choice. The earth buckled under our feet and there was nowhere to run to.

It's a funny thing, an earthquake. Certain things, things like a blue sky and snow in winter and gravity, aren't certain anymore. The universe laughs at our assumptions. Solids stay solid, liquids stay in oceans and we move the earth. The earth does not move us. The earthquake, an earthquake, leaves us shaken, cracked, battered. Faced with the truth of our flawed world, exposed and raw.

Truth is ugly. There is nothing uglier than the truth that you are alive, and someone else is dead. Your beautiful daughter will grow up and change the world, but someone else's beautiful daughter will not, and somehow, the world spins on and on and on.

I know much of Japan's story is written with shock, horror, and fear. But the beginning of this tale does not have to end the way it began. We can still reach out and take back some of the certainty, the control the earth stole from us that day. You can change the ending of this story, erase the words that the cruel winter weather has already begun to etch in the frost blanketing northern Japan. Please take the time to donate to the Red Cross. We cannot just sit back and let earth collect more casualties. Help save the children who survived.

Someday, they might be our salvation.