Fearlessness is a simple gesture of accepting whatever there is.
This is what’s happening in this moment. It can’t be other than
this. This is what it is, and that truth is always soothing.
Sylvia Boorstein

Well, this is it - the antibiotic has squelched the night-time fever, but when I wake up my Tylenol has worn off, and I have a fever then.  Still pain, not quite so bad, overall don't feel much better, but good enough to complain.  That's always a sign a child is getting well - they get cranky.

So here is a truth, though it honestly doesn't soothe me and won't you: sick old people feel worst on a holiday.  My daughter was on her way to Canada yesterday, and out of cellphone range, though we have an emergency number.  So we'd talked Christmas Eve. Tom's folks are very old now, and just making it through their days, and don't call us, though we talked last week when they received the Amish food gift box we sent them, which they love.  That's gratifying.  So the only phone call we got yesterday was from the heart monitor people, telling me my time is up, and to send the damn thing back.  I'd already quit it, increasingly allergic to the leads, including the hypoallergenic leads, so the monitor has  been packaged and in the van since Wednesday, but I was too tired after the ER to find a box to mail it.

I'm not claiming that I ever ran around like a little saint giving sunshine to the sick, aged, and lonely on Christmas day. When I was young and kicking up my heels, I gave no thought to people who might need a phone call or plate of leftovers.  I immersed myself entirely in my holiday, always overloading myself.  When the holidays became grim in my alcoholic family, the overload was anxiety and depression rather than Martha Stewart fun stuff.

No, I have learned everything I know the hard way, by experience.  Well, maybe I'll live long enough to make practical use of some of this particular education.

 "It can't be other than this," Sylvia Boorstein says, "it" meaning Right Now.  Karma is at work.  My kidney karma is complex, and includes having rather small original kidneys, and the fact that my father had kidney stones, i.e., kidney trouble.  And includes the miraculous transplant.  Yes, this is it.  I am trying to open myself to this truth being soothing.  But if it isn't, the above video of Maru playing and sleeping in his Christmas stocking is.  For me, the charm lies in how obviously the camera loves him.