City cutbacks got me thinking. I hear people are already pouring through Helpline’s door looking for assistance – folks with freshly evaporated big incomes, hard on the heels of retirees on all-too-tight fixed incomes.

I’m unemployed and might walk through that door soon.

Cutbacks for Helpline’s many social services. For Bainbridge Youth Services, where young people get jobs and counseling to help them walk the razor edge between drugs or graduation, suicide or life. Cutbacks for Housing Resources Board providing affordable homes. Cutbacks for Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers giving rides to people needing chemotherapy. Cutbacks for Special Needs Foundation, Teen Center, Boys & Girls Club, B.I. Child Care Centers, and WCA’s Domestic Violence Program.

So who makes up the shortfall? I sat spinning a quarter on my coffee table, thinking. It rattled flat. On a banner it said E Pluribus Unum. As a kid, Mom gave me a twig. “Break that,” she said. It snapped in two with satisfying ease. “Now break these.” She gave me a bundle of the little twigs. I couldn’t break them.

I don’t have much money right now, but I’ve got time, so I’m volunteering. Have you got time? What’s in your pantry? More than you need? Got some work for a teen, or anyone, could do? Have a handy skill? Have clothes that don’t fit or firewood? Want to help kids or people with special needs or the elderly or the ill or your next-door neighbor? Have some extra funds jingling in your pocket? Now’s the time to share, and keep it coming, because the tide of need might be rising for a while. But if we stick together, we’ll be stronger.

Sally Metcalf

Bainbridge Island