Saturday, December 20, 1997

Take the time at Christmas to look 'round

By SARA ECKEL / Newspaper Enterprise Assn.

It's one of those stories you read with disbelief. An 11-year-old girl was found in a decrepit New York City apartment building this month. The girl was covered with sores and living in filth. She was dazed and by all indications had been sexually abused. And she had never gone to school.

Immediately, the questions began. Didn't the neighbors know about this? Why didn't they say anything? How could they let this go on?

At first, neighbors denied knowledge of the child's existence. But slowly residents of the building came forward and admitted to a New York Times reporter that they knew about the girl.

But, they said, if she was living in squalor -- if she was living in an unheated apartment strewn with dirty clothes, beer cans and empty methadone bottles -- well that was not unusual. After all, so were they.

"She looked fine to me," one resident told the Times. "She didn't look like she was in no trouble. I mean, if you live in this building, you're in trouble, but she wasn't making any noise to make you think she was hurt."

It would be easy to judge the residents of this Harlem crackhouse for their blindness. But unfortunately, this kind of blindness is all too common.

When we hear a story like this, we usually get it from the news. Reporters present us with a concise narrative, from which a conclusion is easily drawn.

And so with the clarity of outsiders we make our declarations: Someone should have done something. Someone should have known.

But when neglect or sorrow is woven into the fabric of our own lives, it is much more difficult to see. Most of us do not live in such dire circumstances, but we all have people around us who are crying for help.

Whether it is the lonely grandparent, the troubled teen-ager or the friend who is down on her luck, there is always someone who needs more time or attention than she is getting.

But it is very easy to not notice such minor traumas. In fact, it seems like the closer trouble is to us, the harder it is to see. Because it seems normal. After all, if our friends or neighbors or loved ones feel lonely or distraught or depressed, that's really not so unusual.

And during the holidays, especially, we get so caught up in the joys and frustrations of the season that cries for help are easily drowned in the cacophony.

Now I realize that you, dear reader, do not need to open your local paper to learn it's important to take time out for your loved ones at Christmas. Indeed, for a newspaper columnist to even at attempt a true-meaning-of-Christmas column is foolhardy at best.

But here I am. Boldly going where so many have gone before.

What the girl in the crackhouse reminded me of was this: It's not enough to simply take the time for people. We also need to be truly aware of them -- of how they are feeling, of what is happening to them. We need to be present for them.

Which sounds insanely simple, but it's not. Because most of us do not spend our time in the present. We spend it in the past, mulling over that argument with our spouse or replaying that job interview in our head. Or we spend it in the future, fretting about what our mother-in-law will say about our roast beef or wondering if we're going to get that promotion.

It's very hard to turn all that off and look around and simply exist in the moment.

But Christmas, it seems to me, is the perfect time to try. We owe it to ourselves. And we owe it to each other.

E-mail Sara Eckel at saraeum@aol.com.