Crisis meter

By TAD BARTIMUS

It isn't 8 a.m., yet and already the crisis meter is red-lining.

I called a friend in Montana; she couldn't talk, her daughter-in-law and granddaughter had just been in a car wreck. My husband phoned his aunt to offer sympathy as she prepared to bury her husband of 61 years. A neighbor fighting to save his job sought our advice. When he hung up I was staring out the window, trying to figure out a way for a soul sister to avoid bankruptcy, when it dawned on me that I was watching a loaded dump truck slide backwards into the house next door.

Some days my harried synapses are firing so fast I forget to pay my own bills and take my own aspirin. And that's BEFORE I watch the nightly news.

What's going on here?

Life, that's what. As my mother used to say, life wouldn't be so bad except that it's so damned daily. We plan all sorts of wonderful adventures, make lists, tidy up loose ends, project months ahead on our calendars. Then life happens before we've had our first cup of coffee.

This is the kind of day when I think I have too many friends; the wider my circle the more trouble I exponentially acquire. It tilts me off balance, throws me out of kilter, makes me want to turn off the answering machine, unplug the phone, drop out, run off. I'm not unsympathetic, it's just that I can't fix my great aunt's sister-in-law's grandson's brain tumor. Knowing about it nonetheless becomes a nagging worry, not big enough to affect my day-to-day routine but aggravating enough to cast a shadow on my consciousness.

I'm a fixer. I want to kiss it and make it better. Failing that, my nature is to hoist the old kit bag of worries onto my shoulders and drag it around, constantly adding to it via telephone, fax and now cyberspace. Some days my harried synapses are firing so fast I forget to pay my own bills and take my own aspirin. And that's BEFORE I watch the nightly news.

Why can't Arafat and Netanyahu just have a meal together and put all this Mideast stuff behind them? Why can't the Catholics and Protestants in Belfast shake hands and get back to work? Same thing for the Koreans. The networks' Dan, Tom and Peter ratchet up our national anxiety level so much it's enough to drive a person to Martha Stewart Living!

I will spend today imagining that baby in Montana flying through the window of an overturning car; I will ache for Aunt Mary as she walks heavily through the mortuary, debating between mahogany and walnut; I will mentally tally up my soul sister's dwindling finances and feel my gut tighten when I get to the bottom line; I will gingerly lift the evening newspaper to see if the headline "FIRED!" is in big black letters above my neighbor's picture.

Meanwhile, the dump truck is still stuck in the bay window next door.

We can't live in a vacuum. We make connections, seek relationships, love hostages to fortune. It's our grist; without it we'd live on Mars. The more we embrace our fellow travelers the more baggage we'll carry. Most days, I wouldn't have it any other way, especially when I need to share my own burdens and lighten my own load. But today I wonder about those Hale-Bopp people; if there really was a spaceship, did it have a cellular phone?

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