Almost a month. So much happens in a day, though, let alone a month. My brother got sick on the 23rd and ended up having surgery on the 24th, then eventually coming home for recovery on the 25th. It all sounds different when you use numbers instead of the names of the days. "Christmas Eve," "Christmas Day".
The ER was actually busier than I thought it would be a couple of days before Christmas, but when I thought about it that way -- the ER was busy on the 23rd -- it's a different concept. Christmas, a day like any other. Except that we remember one day that wasn't like any other. As I stepped outside the hospital that night after hearing that my brother had to undergo surgery, I kept looking at the sky for angels. But stuff happens Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Someone has to be on duty in the maternity ward; in fact a friend of mine just happened to be working on the floor on which my brother stayed at the hospital Christmas Day. She's a nurse now, yet somehow different to me that all the others in uniform I saw there.
So, the hustle and bustle of Christmas was a little different this year -- hustle and bustle to and from the hospital instead of the supermarket and my sister's house. Quite obviously my mind is still reorganizing after the craziness.
We live in an apartment that overlooks a main street and a freeway. My balcony faces the freeway and all day Christmas day I would look out my window and watch the cars. Sometimes I leave my window open at night and listen to them swishing by -- they never really stop. They slow a little, but there's always someone going somewhere, 4 in the morning, 3 in the afternoon, midnight, 6 AM, doesn't matter. Life just goes on and keeps rolling like the cars on the road and the parts in the factory across the street, or the spinning earth that kept spinning even when the son of God squeezed out into the world. I wonder if Joseph was afraid for Mary when the baby was on the way...Some may call that idle and unholy speculation, yet if they were not people like the rest of us the moment of the occasion is forfeit.
Anyhow, life goes on. Perhaps my speculation isn't unholy, but it may well be idle.
An MTA bus just passed my window.