Happy New Year 2009

I walk out from the Emergency Department, the guarded cheers of Happy New Year still in my ears from our makeshift celebrations in the department.

It is minutes into the New Year, and I walk out into the cool night air. There are fireworks going off in the distance somewhere, the dark night scribbled with transient bursts of neon light. I hear the strains of distinctly Middle Eastern music and the laughter of people far away, and the crickets in their New Year revelry nearby.

I get into the car and begin the forty minute journey home. There are isolated groups of people on the street who are obviously inebriated, and they swing their shirts over their heads in drunken cheer, screaming their greetings for a happy new year. A car passes and a girl sticks her head outside the car window, shouting ecstatically.

Some, like myself, honk in response, and smile. Most of my fellow drivers on the road that night were fairly subdued, however, and preferred a quiet polite drive on the roads.

I near home, and the best thing to me happens that night. A group of children, no more than six or eight year olds, were standing on a street corner on the rows of shops on Sydney Road. It is way past their bedtime, but tonight is not like any other night, and Mummy and Daddy insisted they stay up late.

They are trying to catch the eyes of the passing drivers, and they wave their tiny hands in the air. "Beep!" "Beep!" Their muffled cries come through my window, and I can see their pleading eyes. No one has obliged them so far, and I press long and hard on my car horn.

Their eyes and lips curl into unsurpressed joy, and they are jumping around screaming happily on the pavement, ecstatic to have influenced one more driver to join them in their celebrations. I am laughing a little to myself, surprised by their excitement.

I drive the car to a friend's place, and she has made dinner, long cold now, the other guests have left. I haven't seen her in two years, so there was much to catch up on. Old friends, new year. One of my better New Year's, I must admit.

Tomorrow the world will awake, with a hangover it will spend the entire day trying to shake off.

Happy New Year to all my readers, and here's to new experiences this year!