Normalcy survives amid war

I wasn’t surprised to read in the morning paper that most Maine people seem to be doing a good job of keeping their war concerns in healthy perspective.

Round-the-clock news of the fighting in Iraq and fears about the possibility of terrorist threats to our national security have elevated our fret level, of course, but we’re not becoming unhinged over it. A statewide hot-line service reports that it’s getting more calls from people offering assistance to the troops and their families than pleas from people in need of emotional support. Mental health officials in the Bangor area say they have not noticed an increase in the number of clients suffering from war-induced anxiety since the fighting began. Maine people appear to be going about their lives as normally as possible, which, when you think about it, can be enough of a struggle even without the added stress of war.

A stranger reminded me of this fact of life over the weekend as I was driving up the highway from Augusta in the rain. The young woman was driving a pickup truck with a small box trailer in tow. The truck bed was mounded high with stuff and covered with a glistening tarp against the weather. As I got closer, I saw the large, hand-lettered sign the woman had duct-taped to the back of the trailer for everyone to see.

“Husband cheated,” read the sign, which was positioned over a rain-streaked photograph of the smiling bride and groom on their wedding day.

As I passed the truck I glanced at its driver, this woman who had chosen to announce her betrayal to the world. She stared straight ahead, wearing a kerchief on her head and an expression that looked beaten and forlorn. Her sad eyes suggested that she didn’t need the news from a distant war front to understand what shock and awe really meant, or just how quickly life could ambush you, obliterating all sense of security on your private home front and leaving you scrambling to comprehend what your future might hold.

The morning paper was, in fact, filled with stories of the day-to-day struggles that keep most of us from succumbing to the unhealthy habit of staring at CNN for hours on end, waiting for the next bomb blast in Baghdad to light up the screen. Sharing space with the stories from Iraq, for instance, was the tragedy of the dairy farmer in Hudson whose greatest concern is figuring out what he is going to do now that falling milk prices have forced him to quit the only life he’s ever known.

While Maine’s pro-war and anti-war factions clash on the news pages, the laid-off workers in Millinocket and thousands like them around the state tend to be preoccupied as much these days with dire concerns a lot closer to home, such as how to support their families and pay their bills and keep their schools running.

You can bet that a family somewhere in Jonesport was distracted from the war for much of Friday night, at least, when a local clam digger’s 16-foot skiff broke down in the icy sea and he was forced to paddle to shore. I would imagine, too, that there are parents in Corinth and in Sangerville who haven’t been fixated on every TV report out of Baghdad since they heard the shattering news that their young sons had been killed in motor-vehicle accidents this weekend.

Considering all of the unexpected life-and-death dramas that unfold every day right here at home, touching each of us in time, trying to keep our war anxieties in check is really just a matter of survival.