An oversized hand pushed back the panel of a lace window curtain and two eyes peered out from inside. The eyes bore the marks of age. Wrinkles were their bookends. But there was something else about those eyes. They were childlike, eyes that were beacons of innocence, goodness, awe and wonder.
“A white Christmas!” he exclaimed in a tone that conveyed both giddiness and resignation. “I guess I won’t be making it to Midnight Mass this year; I doubt anyone will,” he said to no one but the solitude that was his companion that Christmas Eve and the eves and days that preceded it for many years. Solitude greeted him in the morning and tucked him into bed at night. It sat across from him for morning coffee, and was his dinner guest each evening. It was the silent listener to his mumblings, to his memories, to his prayers, to the humming of the songs of his youth, and to the sighs and grunts that invariably now accompanied standing, sitting, walking, and just about every movement of his eighty-something year old body. It would be the first Midnight Mass he would miss since the years when “visions of sugarplums danced in his head.” But it had been snowing since early morning and it would be a fool’s mission to be out on the roads that night.
As he fell into the comfort of his armchair, a chair that knew the shape, the contour, every curve of his body, he surveyed the room. It was a large living room in a large house, where there were now more rooms closed off than the three which he presently occupied. It was a house where memories took up more space than furniture. And those memories all came rushing forth out of their usual hiding places that Christmas Eve. He smiled, his eyes became heavy, and his head nodded as his memories became more real to him than the stark reality of being alone.
His brief sleep was startled, however, by the sound of tires spinning nowhere on the street outside his house. And sure enough, as his hand once again pulled back the curtain of the living room window, he made out in the blizzarding snow, the image of a man kneeling as if in prayer beneath the street light, his hands immersed into the cold snow, vainly attempting to dig his car out of the snowdrift into which it had skidded.
“Damn fool!” he mumbled as he let go of the curtain and moved toward his front door as quickly as a man his age could. “Hey! Hey you! You’re stuck! Come here! You’re never gonna to be able to dig yourself out until a plow comes, and God knows when that will be. You might as well come inside and wait.” And so, the man abandoned his car, and the snow, and the cold, and accepted the invitation.
“Look at you! Not even a coat on! You’re gonna catch your death of cold! Take off your shoes and let them dry out a bit,” he said as he opened the door for his unexpected guest to enter. “The name’s Sam.”
“Oh. Heard by God,” his guest smiled in response as he kicked off one shoe.
“What’s that?” Sam squinted back.
“Your name, 'Samuel.' It means Heard by God.”
“Ohhh . . . Well, if God’s heard me, all he’s heard lately is a lot of cussing and complaining,” Sam chuckled.
“I’m Manny,” said his guest as he kicked off the second shoe.
"Well, pleased to meet you Manny. Do you want to use the phone and call your family to let them know you’re okay?” inquired Sam.
“No thanks,” replied Manny. “I’m not from around here.”
“Not spending Christmas with family?” said Sam in a tone that reflected both his surprise and his softheartedness. “Well, I guess we’re kindred spirits then . . . So, if you’re not from around here, where are you from?”
“Hmm . . . Here, there and everywhere, really,” responded Manny vaguely. “I kind of move around a lot.”
“Good for you!” beamed Sam. “It’s great for a young man like yourself to see the world before having to carry the weight of responsibility on his shoulders . . . Come on into the living room and make yourself at home. Come sit by the fireplace and get warm. Let me turn off the radio,” which had been playing Christmas carols nonstop all day.
“No, please!” Manny protested. “I like it. I could listen to Christmas carols the whole year through, and, as a matter of fact, sometimes I do.”
“Say, I bet you’re hungry and could use a nice hot cup of coffee. And I just made something that I think you’re gonna like – tomato soup cake – from an old family recipe, treasured and passed down from generation to generation . . . from the back label of a Campbell’s Tomato Soup can,” chuckled Sam. “Sit here and let the fire warm you. I’ll be right back.”
But when he emerged from the kitchen several minutes later, rather than sitting and warming himself, he found Manny standing at the mantle of the fireplace examining the photographs that were carefully arranged there.
“That’s my family,” Sam offered. “This is my wife, Maeve, the sweetest girl with the prettiest eyes to ever come across the sea from Ireland. That one there is my daughter Megan. And this . . . this is my son, Daniel. Megan lives in California now. She’s very successful, very busy. A lawyer! So, there’s really not much time for visits. And Daniel . . . Daniel was killed in the war. And picking up the picture of his wife and holding it to his chest as if to hug her, he said, “Maeve was never the same after that. Those Irish eyes lost their smile. The doctors say it was a heart attack that took her. I say it was a broken heart.”
And, so as to not give into the melancholy of the moment, he directed Manny’s attention to another picture on the mantle. “And this one . . . well this one is my favorite! It’s of Maeve and Daniel and Megan out in the front yard after the blizzard of ’78. Just look at the smiles on those faces! And look at the tracks they left, the snow angels and footprints in the snow! You know, all winter long I would look out the window and would see those footprints and would get this overwhelming sense of peace, of joy, because even though my children or my wife might have been in school or shopping, the footprints were the telltale signs that they had been there. Those vacant footprints, to me, were still filled with life and love and laughter. That’s why I cherish this picture. Because, although those footprints have been covered over with many seasons’ worth of grass and leaves and more snow, in this picture, those footprints are preserved and frozen for all time.”
“You know, Sam, not everyone who visits us leaves footprints in the snow.”
“What? What’s that? What do you mean?” asked Sam, baffled by Manny’s statement.
“Angels leave no footprints. And neither does God. Yet without a doubt, they visit us, walk with us, stay with us. Some are unconvinced that God is with them, knows them and cares about them. And others despair when they don’t see the footprints. They believe God has abandoned them or worse – that he doesn’t exist at all. But the pure of heart don’t need to see footprints to know he has visited them, walked with them, loves them.”
Sam’s eyes widened; he scratched his head, and then nodded as the realization of Manny’s insight sunk in.
They spoke of many things that night - of faith and of folly . . . of laughter and of lament . . . of love and of loss . . . of things remembered and of things that are better forgotten. Was it hours they spoke? Minutes? Or was it only merely moments? All Sam knew is that the time sped by all too quickly; time that he wished was tangible, that he could hold onto and savor.
A pause came to their conversation and a glint of glee sparkled in Sam’s eyes as he glanced at his small Christmas tree which stood where grander trees stood tall in Christmases past. He got up from his chair and moved toward the tree with a briskness that his legs hadn’t known in years.
“Ohhh! I have something for you! A Christmas present!” Sam exclaimed. “Every year I buy myself a present and wrap it, put it under the tree and open it on Christmas morning, trying to convince myself that I don’t know what’s inside. I want you to have it. Here . . .”
Sam handed the crudely wrapped box to Manny who opened it and smiled. It was a grey cardigan sweater.
“Sam, it’s beautiful. And you’re so kind to offer it to me. But I can’t,” protested Manny.
“Ah, I’ve got a dozen of them. Try it on,” insisted Sam. And Manny obliged.
“Well, it’s a little big but you’ll grown into it,” Sam said with a wink and a smile. “But take it off now so you feel the good of it outside later.”
And just as Manny did, the sound of steel gliding across asphalt interrupted the serenity of the Christmas music on the radio, of their conversation, of the moment, and a stark and unwelcomed reality suddenly hit Sam.
“The plow,” he said without expression. He knew his Christmas guest would soon be leaving.
“Yeah, I guess I better go out and clear the snow off my car and hit the road,” responded Manny with a tone of somber reluctance.
“Let me walk you to the door . . . Now don’t forget your shoes!” Sam joked. And, as he reached the hallway, he was both confused and amazed when he realized that they had left no puddle on the floor.
Sam then gathered the courage to ask the question that had puzzled him and grew with greater intensity all night long. “Say, do I know you. Have we ever met before? Your face seems awfully familiar to me.”
“Maybe we’ve met before,” said Manny. “Or maybe I just have one of those faces that looks like everyone else,” he said with a smile.
And Sam’s childlike eyes stared deeply into Manny’s, hoping that a time, a place, some remembrance of a past encounter, would surface from the dust and cobwebs of his mind. But no recollection emerged, which didn’t stop Sam from believing somehow, somewhere, sometime, the two had met before.
“Well anyway. . . umm . . . Merry Christmas, Manny,” Sam offered.
“Merry Christmas Sam.” And as his hand reached for the door knob, he turned back and looked intently into Sam’s eyes. “Sam, today salvation has come to this house. You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And with that, he turned away, opened the door, and was gone.
The door closed. Sam returned to the living room, to his old familiar chair, to the carols on his radio. As his head found the hollow in the upholstered back of the chair that was its usual resting place, he tried to make sense of Manny’s parting words and of that whole Christmas Eve night. Suddenly his eyes caught sight of the sweater that Manny had left draped on the arm of the chair where he had been sitting.
“Hey! Hey! Wait a minute! You forgot! You forgot your sweater!” Sam raced to the door and, as he opened it, the radio suddenly began to blare at an almost deafening volume with the most beautiful sounding choir he had ever heard singing:
Hark! the herald angels sing,
"Glory to the new-born King!
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled.”
And . . . coming seemingly from both nowhere and everywhere . . . was Manny’s voice above the sound of the choir:
“For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty, and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me.”
Sam squinted to see past the falling snow. But beneath the street lamp, he saw no plow. He saw no car. He saw no Manny. And suddenly, Sam gasped. Tears brimmed from those eyes which again beamed with childlike innocence, awe and wonder. The cascading tears warmed his frozen cheeks as he looked down at the pathway that led to his door. For he realized . . . there were no footprints in the snow.
Two thousand years ago, a babe was born in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes, serenaded by angels, visited by shepherds and Wise Men. He grew, and walked the dusty roads of Galilee and Judea, walked up a hill called Calvary, and walked out of a tomb that held his body for three days. And today, he walks whatever road life takes us. He is Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. He is Emmanuel, “GOD WITH US.” Blessed are the pure of heart who need no footprints in the snow to know that God has been in their midst.
Deacon Bruce Olsen: 2018
Revised: 2022
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