Alpacas, Obamacare and the thin line

It’s been a tough week for a lot of us.

The days are getting shorter, the economy remains anemic and political rhetoric is intensifying in the face of a so-called government “shutdown.”

Just in the last seven days, our nation has witnessed some stunning and bizarre examples of citizen unrest.

On Thursday, a woman suffering from depression attempted to crash the White House barriers. She had her infant daughter in her car. She then headed to the Capitol, where she was eventually shot to death by police. Fewer than 24 hours later, a man set himself on fire near the National Mall.

Of course, two weeks earlier, Aaron Alexis went on a killing rampage that left 12 people dead at the DC Navy Yard.

Despite those horrific incidents, the nation remains bitterly, stubbornly focused on an intensely partisan battle that is still raging on Capitol Hill. These other incidents were mere blips on the radar screen, generally ignored like those blips that signaled the advance of Japanese fighter planes approaching Oahu on December 7, 1941.

It is mind-numbing stuff; stuff that is too difficult to even think about,  much less the sort of stuff that we are willing to discuss in the sphere of public policy.

We avoid this stuff because it’s much harder to point fingers and assign blame. It’s not as convenient or simple as arguing about Obamacare. It’s stuff that we generally want to avoid.

What does this have to do with alpacas?

As a so-called “consumer” of mental health services, I have a wide range of my own diversionary tactics, a boat-load of coping tools I can deploy to ignore the obvious and the overwhelming.

I am also a semi-professional pundit, not to mention a professional consultant who spends the bulk of his time crafting public policy messages and strategies to help clients achieve their goals.

When those two worlds intersect, I need a distraction as much as anyone else. So, I began focusing on alpacas.

Go ahead and laugh. I will wait.

This week is also the week of the annual Fryeburg Fair. For many years, I have represented various clients at that fair, staffing booths in the Natural Resources building and thus unable to enjoy the fair like most people with my family.

Of all the animals on display at the fair, I have always had a soft-spot (literally) for alpacas. I have long fantasized about how cool it would be to have a pet alpaca.

It’s just a fantasy; it’s not the real thing

This year I did not have to work at the fair. Laura and I decided that we would go on Saturday. Our youngest son, Matthew wanted to join us and bring along his girlfriend. We began planning this day almost three weeks ago.

This year, we had other things to consider about attending the fair. Laura’s MS has been progressing. On Monday, the neurosurgeon ordered her to stay home from work. For the first time, I had to get serious about wheelchairs and their cost, function. Maybe I would not need it this year. But it is part of our family’s new reality.

Earlier in the week, I once again dreamed about how great it would be to own an alpaca. The little kid in me got very excited about this prospect. Matthew, in fact, suggested that we would name our alpaca Cameron.

I am terrified thinking about my wife’s MS. I want things to stay the same. The future looks so uncertain. This is the Fryeburg Fair, dammit. I just want an apple crisp, wager on a few races, smell maple syrup and hear reports about the Red Sox and their progress in the ALCS.

What happens if Laura can’t go back to work? What happens to our health insurance? How will we be impacted by Obamacare? What if . . .?

I went to bed early on Tuesday evening in a mix of anticipation about seeing the alpacas at the fair and worrying about my wife’s health. I wept like I have not wept in years.

I really wanted an alpaca. I researched alpacas, and the adult that also lives in me tried to be as gentle as possible. But reality won on Tuesday. Our yard is too small. Alpacas live in herds. We have no business, whatsoever, in even considering the purchase of an alpaca.

It was the clashing of reality and fantasy. This tool of distraction would soon need to be replaced. What do I do now?

Sometimes a fantasy is all you need

We had so much fun on Saturday. Despite the heavy traffic, the difficulty in finding a parking spot, we all laughed so much. People of all stripes, sizes and colors packed the fairgrounds. Yes, we saw the alpacas, and we even found Cameron.

The alpacas, goats, sheep and cattle all seemed somewhat oblivious to the incessant buzz of human activity that surrounded them. They were content to gnaw on hay, to root in piles of sawdust.

For several hours, I did not hear one word about John Boehner or President Obama. I did hear that the Sox scored another run in the bottom of the fourth. The air became cooler all around us, the night sky settled in quickly.

And then it dawned on me. There is a thin line that separates reality from fantasy, dreams from nightmares.

We spend so much energy fretting about the unknown.

Sometimes all you need is some hot apple crisp, a home run by the Red Sox, the company of those you love and the experience of petting an alpaca. That way, the buzz of human activity that surrounds you becomes little more than just another day at the fair.