010_THE HOSPITAL

When I was a little boy I played with a stick in my hand. I ran and fell.
With the end of the stick, I hurt my right eye. After that, I had some problems with this eye.
Five years old they took me to the hospital in Ljubljana (our Capital) I remained there a long time, long enough that they fixed my eye.
When my parents were leaving the hospital I cried and asked my mother not to leave me behind.

My mother promised me they will come back the next day. Doctors acted like... please, don't promise him anything, it will be worse afterward.

Next day they didn't come. At the next, they didn't come either. And next...
Until I gave up waiting for them. I thought my parents left me for good.

Another kid was there in the bunch, he was very much like me. We sat on the bed when he told me:
"Grownups - they don't understand! They are not like us, they do not think as we do, they don't feel as we do. We got to help each other... we are alone. It is only us!

That's when I thought I saw God. I saw God as a friend. He appeared to me as the child.

****

We weren't religious at home in the family.
My parents didn't teach me about God.

My grandparents on my father's side were religious and when I was there visiting they took me to the church.
I was listening to biblical stories told in church and at my grandfather's house. I carefully accepted their dark and obscure knowledge of the "holly" or whatever their idea of holly was. The Church seemed to me like an institution for advertizing and selling God, nothing more.

I also accepted their hazy offer that someday Heavens will be ours!
Under certain conditions, of course.

Going to church meant learning about these conditions.
But I haven't seen God there.

My mother who had a pre-war communist background and her family was strictly atheistic wasn't suppose to know I was in a church. So this remained hidden from her.
 But every holiday in the country my grandmother and my aunts took me to church and I was there like other kids in the village who were in church.
I was old enough to know that I cannot talk about it at my home. This worked vice versa too. It worked for both sides.
Actually - three sides! I didn't speak to others about my secrets either.
They weren't interested in them anyway. 
So we lived, me and them, without God.

****

While I studied at the University I lived in the suburbs of Ljubljana, our capital city.
I was taking a bus downtown every day. One day I took a bus and this happened!
I noticed a small boy on the bus trying to fight his way thru the crowd. He was trying to reach the exit door at the rear end of the bus. He carried a huge schoolbag on his small shoulders and was hardly moving thru the crowd at all. The crowd didn't help him!
Small as he was he couldn't move fast enough to catch the open door. He couldn't compete with the robust grownups who didn't care for a small child. They hurdled towards the door leaving him behind.

The driver closed the door and accelerated the engine.
I shouted across the bus: Hey, driver! You missed one. He needs to get out too!

The driver stepped on brakes and the bus stopped with a jerk!
The door opened and the crowd let the boy reach the door. Thru an open door, he slipped out of the bus and reached the pavement outside.
The chauffeur closed the door and restarted the engine.

The boy fixed his schoolbag on his shoulders, turned his head towards his left and looked for me standing close to the bus window. Then he winked at me, nodded his head and waved with hand all at once. I waved him back!

That was the second time I met God. The boy had the same look in his eyes as my little friend from the hospital.