monique

Woolgathering
2001-10-18 03:14:51 (UTC)

Safe Haven

I've made a conscious decision to make my home a safe haven.
I do not watch the continuous coverage on the latest anthrax
scare. I listen to classical music if I listen to the radio.
I skip the first section of the newspaper. Sticking my
head into the sand? Maybe, but I find all the talk about
something I have absolutely no control over, stressful. Too
stressful. So for my own mental health I've just backed away
from it all and tried to make my home a safe haven.

Do I get completely away from it? No. I'll get a call from
someone asking me if I've heard that the mayor of Baltimore
has said that there is a credible threat that aerosol
anthrax will be sprayed in the city. My oldest son, 20, is
in Baltimore. I go to the post office to get my mail and
will run into an acquaintance who will want to talk
about the latest they've heard about the crisis. I listen
for a few minutes and excuse myself politely. I'll go
to the little local market and the clerk will ask me if I've
heard that the US House of Representatives is closing down
for the rest of the week. No, I hadn't
heard that.

I am disappointed, but not surprised, that the media has
blown this anthrax scare into a huge story. As Roseanna
Danna Danna would say, "Ya know, it's always something."
We are constantly in a crisis of some sort or another. We
have a health care crisis, a guns in the schools crisis, a
gasoline price crisis, an energy crisis and on and on
and on. If there isn't one of those, there's always a
weather crisis.

I am not interested in defining my life by what crisis we
are currently in. I'd rather live my life. So I do
housework and pay bills and bake cookies. I get out quilts
and put them on all the beds and the sofas and make
soup for the boys to eat after school. I wash windows. I
write a long letter to my aunt telling her about what my
sons are doing and the silly things our cats are up to. I
call my Mom and talk about her roses. I go out to lunch
with a friend who feels the same way I do and we talk for an
hour about what we've been doing the past few days and the
homecoming dance at the high school on Friday, the Halloween
decorations we've noticed in houses around town and
note that we've been seeing flocks of wild geese flying
south.

I am prepared as much as I can be against any crisis. I
have emergency supplies and an emergency plan. I do not
have any gas masks because I don't see the point; I'm not
going to wear one day and night and by the time I put one on
it would probably be too late anyway. I am not stockpiling
Cipro. I am not seeing anthrax spores wherever I go and I'm
not afraid of opening any mail. The rest of my preparation
has to do with prevention against unnecessary and
unproductive stress and worry.

Getting the population of a country frightened and scared is
the purpose of terrorism and for whatever reason, the media
seems to be helping them do it even if all they mean to do
is inform. Well, they're not going to do that to me
and my family. So there!




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