Before I was Chaviva, I was Amanda, and I lived at 1921 East 33rd Street in Joplin, Missouri. 

It was a duplex in red brick, and we had an island in our kitchen that I loved. When we were looking to move there in the early/mid-1980s, I remember my older brother and I playing Mousetrap in the basement while the adults talked. When we moved in, I got the big front room with the nice window. As a result, the Nintendo ended up in my room. We waited for the bus across the street, and kvetched every year as mom took our "first day of school" photos. I can still picture the roads of my neighborhood and Range Line Road, which we would drive down to visit my dad at Payless Cashways, which sat in a front lot in the way of the Wal-Mart. I also remember the roller rink with the big plaster dinosaurs out front where all of our school skating parties took place. 

When I was in the third grade, I took an aptitude test that got me into an Enrichment Program, which took me out of school every Thursday to Irving Middle School with other "advanced" kids from across the school district to dissect frogs and play on primitive computers. In the fifth grade we had to do a big project, and I chose Origami. The fair to present our projects was at Joplin High School in a huge gym, and I came prepared with a giant Origami crane and a "Blossom" style hat. It was a proud moment, one of my early academic achievements that I remember vividly. The entire day made me excited -- only a few more years and I'd not only be in this auditorium, but in the halls of the high school.

And then? We moved from Joplin to Nebraska in August 1996, when I was preparing to enter the seventh grade. My friends all stayed behind, as did my fathers and my childhood best friend still lives there. I left my ballet dreams there, not to mention the people who knew me as a child, The Magnificent Seven. Seven best friends.

On Sunday, I got a disturbing call from my mom while I was attending a conference in Chicago: Joplin has been decimated. Irving Middle School and Joplin High School are complete losses. Call your friends. 

I went first to Facebook, then to Twitter, then to texting. I couldn't find my friend, my best childhood friend,

Jessie, who is due this summer with her first child. The girl who got an American Girl doll and made me jealous for months. The friend who I haven't seen since college when she came to visit me in Nebraska. And I couldn't find her.

I went to the Facebook pages of mutual friends. Why hadn't I kept up wit them? Why didn't I have their numbers? No one had heard from her. My heart sank as death tolls came in, photos showed the wrath of nature. I felt empty. I grew up here.

And then the text message came: I am okay, but things aren't. People are dead. Buildings are destroyed. We can't find people. We can't drink the water.

My heart broke, out of happiness for knowing that she was alive but also for knowing that so many were dead and the toll was rising. My father emailed me: One of his former coworkers was dead, some were missing, and many were accounted for.

I feel lucky, only because of circumstances. We moved to Nebraska because my dad got a promotion, but the business went bankrupt within the year. Move back or stay, they asked? We stayed. It is funny how it works out. We could have still been there. The centerline of the tornado was less than a mile north where I grew up, and the destruction ravaged my childhood neighborhood. Sometime in the early 90s, there had been a really bad storm. It ripped the basketball hoop off of our roof, flung roof tiles from houses across our neighborhood blocks, and destroyed the Crown Video (while sparing the Red Lobster). They called it wall winds, but we knew better.

Joplin is not as it was. It was the only childhood home I knew. Benito's had the best Mexican and my dad subsisted on Sonic (these, of course, were the years before I came to Judaism, before it was on my radar). My most vivid sensory memory was of the scent of stale soda stuck on cans from the recycling yard where we took cans that we had collected from my dads store and then crushed ourselves at home. I haven't been back in probably 10 years, and now many of the places I knew, that are part of my narrative, are as dust, back to the earth.

Baruch HaShem for memory. I've never understood why my memories of that house, the people, the places, the scents has always been so strong. Kindergarten feels like it was yesterday, and doing the limbo at the skating rink feels like mere moments ago. 

With memories intact, all I can do now is help my friends. Friends who I haven't seen in years but who need me more now than ever. 

Chaviva Galatz converted to Judaism in 2010. She's a blogger, and social media maven. Chaviva currently resides in Teaneck, NJ.