3AM THOUGHTS: I haven’t felt  “Christmasy” this year. Perhaps I’ve lost the wonder or perhaps I’ve wandered with the baggage of a parent with dementia that got too heavy. Either way, as I’ve sought the season’s joy & hope, my mind has wandered, repeatedly wondering about Joseph. For 9 months, even with assurances from an angel, he likely had to deal with pointed fingers, & whispers from folks who were sure ol’ Joe & Mary were using “virgin conception” as cover for a tango between the covers. Then, he had to load the family donkey for a rocky 90 mile journey to Bethlehem with a teenage girl due any minute to pay his taxes because online extensions hadn’t been invented only to find every hotel that offered free continental breakfast was booked & a cave would have to do. Not settled long, a baby arrived & was swaddled in a feeding trough used by the caves other occupants & then, as he might have been holding not his, but His infant & world hope, visitors showed up & Joseph had to be questioning everything. He was told the Son of God was arriving & the first folks that show up to look were the lowest of the lowly shepherds, the ones working the overnight shift, the kind that get off at 7AM & pop a cold PBR on the way to the local waffle joint, the kind that smell of wet wool & sheep urine & the aromas of bare or shoddily sandaled feet mixed with fields by night. Later, sages on camelback with treasures stopped in to balance the haves & have nots in the guest book & maybe Joseph grasped the magnitude of the day or like some of us or maybe just me, he was caught up in a past of pointed fingers or worries about tomorrow’s questions or right now & “please God, let me & Mary get some rest” & maybe he found on the first Christmas what I found with more meaning a week before my 62nd one, as hours ago I gazed down a football field length church hallway at a joyous, dancing granddaughter, that in a cave, in a meadow, atop a camel, or in a parked car as afternoon rain beats the roof in a memory care facility parking lot as the mind beats the air of “why, God?” or dancing down the hall, that the joy, the hope for us all, Christmas or any day, was swaddled in a trough…