A note of optimism left under the windshield of a tornado-damaged car in East Nashville.

The chipper sound announcing an incoming text at 7:54 a.m. Tuesday was pretty much the definition of a rude awakening. “Everything OK with you guys?” my friend Ed was asking. “Just seeing the news about a tornado in East Nashville.”

The text arrived while we were visiting friends in Mississippi, and we had no inkling of what the atmosphere had delivered in Middle Tennessee overnight. But the words “tornado” and “East Nashville” will immediately cut through the mental fog when East Nashville translates as “home.”

The first order of business was texting our next-door neighbor, Jim, to ask for a report. Next, we tuned in to the Weather Channel, where the images of smashed walls, shattered windows, snapped utility poles and roofs ripped from their moorings made for some anxious viewing.

Fairly soon a response from Jim took away the worst of the fears.

“Our street did well,” he reported. “Your house looks fine. We have debris from Holly Street in our yards. No power and can’t get out of neighborhood. We are well.”

That reassurance, with the implicit message that our cats weren’t in danger, made it seem reasonable to stick to our planned itinerary and return Thursday.

But it was also plain that many fellow Nashvillians – along with residents of counties to the east – weren’t nearly so fortunate. The death toll, all but two from those areas east, kept ticking up.

We took interstates back to Nashville, rather than slower, more scenic options. After a quick settling in, we went out to explore the streets around us to gauge the damage firsthand.

It was sobering.

A bit of background: I’m no newcomer to the havoc nature can wreak. I lived on the Mississippi Coast during Hurricane Camille in 1969. For decades, I could imagine nothing worse than the devastation left in its wake.

Until I saw what Hurricane Katrina did to the Coast in 2005.

Nor was tornado damage in Nashville a new experience. Among its many tolls, the April 1998 twister basically disintegrated the nave of my church at the time, St. Ann’s, leaving a literal and spiritual hole in the congregation.

What is it about topography, meteorology or just bad luck that has put East Nashville on the path of destruction twice in that time?

Since getting home, the first lesson we’ve gathered on our explorations around our neighborhood from Five Points east is how capricious the tornado was. Even in the worst-hit areas, some structures were left basically untouched within a stone’s throw of others that were all but destroyed.

It’s easy to read such randomness as a metaphor for life in general: Mayhem, even death, can strike anywhere, anytime.

Not a comforting thought.

But there were also the latest reminders of Nashville’s resilience, most recently demonstrated by the slow but sustained recovery from the record flooding of 2010. In this case, just days after the devastation, shattered windows had already been boarded over, leaking or absent roofs were covered with the familiar blue tarps, and piles of debris set street side for removal.

It still looked bad. It will look bad for a while. But signs of healing are encouraging.

People were out in teams or solo doing preliminary repairs or necessary demolition. Three blocks from our house, at the No. 14 fire station on Holly Street, itself partly decapitated and heavily damaged by the storm, volunteers were handing out free food and supplies for needy residents and those working in the area.

Among the somber faces and determined looks, there were also more smiles than you might imagine.

One particular symbol of encouragement caught my eye. A smashed Ford Fiesta sat outside one house, clearly going nowhere soon. Its roof was crushed and its windshield shattered by something or other weighty the storm had casually dropped onto it. Under the wiper, someone had placed a small yellow Post-It note with a message inscribed:

“We will recover from this,” it said. “We love you!”

That’s our Nashville. Tested again. Still strong.

Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville. He can be reached at [email protected]