My Christmas Eve with Leo

Last night I broke a tradition that extends back to the early 1980’s.  That tradition is driving into town to spend Christmas Eve with my friend Bill and Kim and dozens of stoppers-bye touring the luminaries in their neighborhood.  I was actually pulling my shoes on to go there when the power dropped from my house and left me in the cerulean blue of first darkness caught in a sudden snowstorm.

The house fell into perfect silence.

My friend Leo turned 87 a few months ago.  He presently lives all alone just below me on a slope overlooking the lake.  He is mostly confined to a chair in his living room, attended by all manner of electric gadgets.  Worried that he might be without power for an extended time, I used my twice-as-smarter-than-me-phone to call in the power outage and then to call off my trip into town.

I had to pull the emergency release on my garage door before I could lift the door and back out into the dizzying swirls of snow.  I drove the short distance down to Leo’s place.

I need to express this right now: I had a great Christmas Eve with Leo.

We sat together in total darkness for about two hours, talking about our lives.  He loved his wife and he loved my wife.  I loved my wife and I loved his wife.  He told me he was born on an Indian Reservation in eastern Montana and told me he could recall, as a boy, thinking the age of fifteen was old and hoping he would someday be that old.

“I wish I could be that old again,” he said.

We talked about how my Uncle Nick was his best friend, about my cousins, how proud he is of his own sons and his daughter, his grandchildren—though he gives every generation hell.  We talked about everything you might imagine.

The lights eventually blossomed from darkness all round us.  We celebrated with a verbal “thanks” to the linemen out there.  I made sure all of the electronics (and in particular the television) were in working order.  “Well,” I said as I stood by his door to drive back to the light of my own house, “Merry Christmas, Leo!"

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

--Mitchell Hegman