In One Week's Time

1. The television wont turn on.
2. The refrigerator stopped cooling.
3. The DSL line is hormonal.

Okay, we have another tv and it affects the teenagers more than it affects me, the refrigerator was a spare in the garage for extra pop, and I can rely on a dial up connection if I need to.

How quickly we forget that these quandaries are superficial when compared to what could be. That "new-take-on-life" feeling that occurs after a close call quickly gives way to distress with the weight of every day life. I find myself at inner civil war with the contradicting feelings of relief for near misses and stress from daily burdens.

Let me explain. Last Friday, I was defrosting my upright freezer when Emily (my 13 year old) yelled from the basement that there was something on the ceiling. I knew it would be water from the melting ice and was already planning the steps to correct the problem. I hollered to her to help me clean up the towels that I had placed around the freezer to prevent such leaks.

Taking the pile of towels to the sliding door, she began shaking the ice out of them. We do not have a deck built yet, but instead, a railing nailed to the house for protection. Emily, was leaning against that railing when it gave way, causing her to fall eight feet to the ground, landing on her side, narrowly missing a riding lawn mower and a fiberglass ladder, but not escaping the nails which were protruding jaggedly through the railing that she fell with.

I heard a terrified "Mooooommm", a thundering crash, then gut-wrenching silence. It took me only seconds to get from the pantry to the slider, but in that time, tragic thoughts raced through my head and I found it hard to breath. I didn't know what I would find when I looked through the door. Seeing that she was conscious, I got ready to jump before common sense took over and I grabbed the phone and ran around to the back of the house after screaming at her not to move.

Finally, at the med center, between a lady throwing up buckets of blood and a screaming, bleeding one year old that shoved his binky into his gums, we were finally getting x-rays. Upon arrival, they were concerned that she broke her hand and her hip, but unbelievably there were no broken bones. She had some pretty big gashes so they bandaged her up, gave us an antibiotic and sent us home with Ibuprophen. I was emotionally okay by then, but when I tried to sleep that night, I kept reliving the accident in my head and imagining what might have happened. Why do we do that?

Long story short, she is okay and all of the stresses of that week faded to mere inconveniences. Now that she is seemingly better, stress and worry and frustration creep back into my thoughts. Why is it that when we know things could be so much worse, do we tend to fret the small things? Things like tv's and fridges and dsl lines that can be replaced take a higher link on our worry chain than being thankful that we aren't planning funerals or holding hospital vigils.

Maybe that's why close calls happen. To remind us that we're getting too wrapped up with inconsequential events and not giving our blessings adequate recognition.