Sorry, can't make that meeting. I plan to hibernate this winter

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

We are talking about going to bed early and pulling the covers over our heads and closing out the world and hibernating until May.

Only it's just talk. We can't hibernate. Morning comes; the clock says it's morning, but it's hard to tell. The day is gray. Our mood is gray. The trees are bare, black, bone thin. We are bone-weary. Burdened.

It's cold. It's damp. Thanksgiving looms. Then it's Christmas with all the shopping, spending, racing. For what? For whom?

Then it's the rest of the winter - long, dark, dreary months until spring.

The car is falling apart. The insurance is due. So are the taxes. We need to put the gas grill away, wash the windows, store the summer clothes, clean out the cabinets, balance the checkbook, get a haircut. We want to hunker down, rest, nest.

But we can't. A friend is in the hospital. We visit him after work, before dinner, before the meeting we promised we'd attend, before helping with homework.

A daughter is getting married. We shop nights, weekends and holidays to fit it in. We stay up late planning, talking, dreaming.

A sister flies home with her family. Or an old friend comes to visit. Or it's class reunion time. Or a baby is up all night, coughing and crying.

We manage somehow. We fit everything in.

We are worker, parent, chauffeur, caretaker, nurse, psychologist, cook, friend and coordinator, supermen and superwomen roaring through the days, putting one foot in front of another in a race that has no finish line.

"My class is full of kids with major problems," a teacher confides. "I leave school drained every day. Then I stop at my father's, do a little cleaning and some errands for him, drive home, make dinner for my family, correct papers, and fall into bed exhausted. I can barely make it through a day."

"I'm not having fun anymore," says another woman, whose youngest child is 4. "When the kids talk to me, I'm not listening. When I'm with them, I'm thinking about work. When I'm at work, I'm worrying about them. It's wearing me out. I collapse at night."

"You have to slow down," all the old people watching from the sidelines say. "You're pushing too hard. You're doing too much. You're not taking the time to enjoy life."

They have the time - time to spend at malls, to read the catalogs that come in the mail, to bake and sew and talk on the phone and watch TV and movies and call us up and say, slow down.

But how? What do you eliminate?

A woman owns her own business. She has a half-dozen employees, four children, an elderly mother, a house with a mortgage, kids in college, car payments.

What should she give up? Visiting her mother? Caring for her family? Working? Making Thanksgiving dinner? Who will make it if she doesn't? Who will pay the mortgage and tuitions? Who will prepare for Christmas if she suddenly stops?

Another woman is a lawyer. She works full time. Her husband works full time. They have two children in college, two tuition payments, a second mortgage on their house, and elderly parents, - one in a nursing home, one in rehabilitation, one constantly in and out of hospitals.

Almost every night they visit someone. Then talk on the phone to the others. Every weekend, it's the same. Factor in commuting time, plus the occasional time away to see their kids, plus the dozens of little things that have to be done - someone has to put up the storm windows, take the car to be serviced, pick up the cleaning, shop, cook - and they have zero time left for themselves.

What can they cut out? Nothing. That's the problem. There is no simplifying the lives we lead. That's why we pull the covers over our heads. That's why we dream about hibernating.

For this, what we have, is the good life. We got what we wanted. We're needed in our jobs, our families and our homes.

The only problem is we have to race, juggle and sleep quickly to fit it all in. In the summer, it seems possible. But in the dark and cold of late fall, the juggling gets harder, for our need to slow down weighs us down in these dusky, shrinking days.