As our world turns
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
In a big city, life's dramas are multiplied by as many people living there, which takes on huge proportions. But the occupants of the town register very little of this real life soap opera going on around them. Depending on the size of your community, you can hear an ambulance every hour but you don't know the particulars of the call. Along with your morning coffee you read about disasters in the newspapers, however, these are people you really don't know. They're as faceless as the actors on the TV screen. However, in a little town like Ramona, we know all the main characters in our daytime serial.
If an ambulance comes into town, we can trace the sound of the siren and know where it stopped. The same goes for the sheriff's car. All of this "knowing" is a heavy load of info to have about your neighbor. And no matter whether today's episode of "As Our World Turns in Ramona" is joyous or sad, cause for celebration or embarrassment, we all tune in tomorrow to see how things turn out.
In a small place, we know things about one another that the world at large doesn't know and this calls for a heart full of compassion, a lot of understanding, and a measure of forgiveness for ourselves as well as others. If you yell too loud at your husband, someone hears it. If you burn your trash when you aren't supposed to, someone smells it. When you go to the hospital, the grocery store, or get stalled beside the road, someone sees it. When you are absent from church or lunch, you are missed and someone will probably check on you to see if you're okay. This kind of knowing is both the joy and the pain of a small town.
Mostly it's good. Like the day someone came running to tell me, that someone told them, that a pipe had broken at my house and water was running everywhere. I was grateful that they knew where to find me. Another nice part of knowing is that you know whom to call if you need help. The down side is that our failures can be downright humiliating, and we wish that no one knew, but they do. And then again, people think they know, and they don't know at all. That's all life in the small town.
I thought about the compassion of knowing this weekend as I watched the cars cruise around town. At this very minute there are people driving around cities in America and no one is paying any attention, but in Ramona if you see someone drive by, you usually know a part about the on-going story of their life.
For instance, my aunt was out driving her car on Saturday. She's a gutsy lady and I knew that she was practicing. She's been confined for almost four months, recovering from a major surgery, and she wanted to make sure she hadn't forgotten how to drive.
On Sunday, I saw my neighbor down the street, driving her husband around town. He's been ill and was probably home for just a day or so and wanted to see the spots where he had spent so many hours working — the alfalfa field, the cattle corral on the edge of town, the land where Rick had cut and baled hay, down Main Street where the store stands closed, past the barbershop, by the houses of family and friends, and finally home again.
Later in the afternoon, our newest Ramona resident came home from the hospital, brand new and cute as a button! I've lived in Ramona long enough that I can remember when the baby's mother was only five or six years old. We'd come to town for a couple of weeks in the summer and this little girl would run across the road to welcome us. I called her "the reporter," because as soon as we hit town, she'd be over on our porch reporting the news of Ramona — all the people who'd moved in and out, all the cats that were going to have kittens, and how many puppies they had at home. After all, when you're only in town for a couple of weeks each summer, you miss a lot of episodes of "As Our World Turns."
Now, our little home town reporter has grown up, and she just brought her own wee baby over for a first visit. It's another day in the country and our newest little one in town reminds us that it does take a village to raise a child. If it's safe for the kids it is a good place for all of us! Stay tuned.
