The Christmas Sweater (14 page)

T
he smell of pancakes was so wonderfully strong that it actually woke me up. I opened
my eyes and squinted at the bright light that was streaming through the bedroom window
and across my face.

I touched my cheek. It was wet. I had been crying. Yes, I remembered that.
But how did I get back to the bedroom at my grandparents’? Had they come looking for
me?
I noticed that I was fully dressed, but not in what I’d been wearing the night before.

As I gained consciousness, the world around me
flooded my senses. The brisk, sharp air of the upstairs room braced my skin. The aroma
of doughy pancake batter and sweet maple syrup filled the air. I could hear the sound
of sizzling bacon. Something was different about it all. I felt different. I felt
light again.

I sat up. Two bread bags were lying on the floor, and my Christmas sweater was clutched
tightly in my arms. I pressed it against my face. My mother had touched this sweater.
Minute by minute and link by link she had made it. Not only had I changed, but so
had the sweater. It felt different to me now—like a sacred relic of the past. “What
a gift,” I said to no one in particular. “What a perfect gift.”

“Eddie?”

My heart stopped. I looked up at the closed bedroom door.

“Who are you talking to? May I come in?”

The door opened. My mother stood in its frame, illuminated in a bright halo by the
light of the stairwell. At first I just stared, disbelieving. “Mom?”

“Good morning, sleepyhead.”

I jumped from my bed and ran to her, throwing my arms around her and almost knocking
her over. “Mom!”

She laughed. “My, I didn’t expect such a big welcome. Especially after last night.”

“You’re here!”

“Of course I am. Did you think I left you?”

My eyes filled with fresh tears. “But we drove home…the accident.”

She looked at me quizzically.

“When I came up to get you, you were sound asleep. I thought that after such a bad
day it would be best to just let you sleep it off. Apparently I was right.”

It was all coming back to me. I had come upstairs and lain down with my sweater for
just a moment…. It couldn’t have been a dream. Could it?

My mother ran her hand through my hair. “I thought maybe we would just try again in
the morning. After all, isn’t Christmas really about second chances?”

I pushed my head into her chest and cried. “Oh, Mom. Thank you. I’m so sorry about
how I treated you. You’re
the best mother in the world. And I love my sweater more than you could ever know.”

She took a step back, smiling. “Now, that was some night’s rest. So you like your
sweater now?”

“More than anything.”

“More than, say, a bicycle?”

“A million times more. More than any stupid, old bicycle. Can we please do Christmas
again? I’ll do it right this time. I promise.”

She looked at me and smiled. “You really do mean it, don’t you?”

Unable to speak, I just nodded. She again pulled me into her and kissed the top of
my head. “I love you.”

I spoke through tears. “I know you do. That’s why I love my sweater so much. Because
you made it.”

After a few more minutes she said, “Why don’t you change your clothes and come downstairs.
Breakfast is almost ready.”

I held tightly to her. “Please don’t leave.”

She laughed. “I’m just going downstairs. And who knows, there might be other surprises.”

Somehow, I knew what she was talking about. “I don’t want any other surprises.”

“Don’t be too sure,” she said. She kissed my forehead. “Get dressed and come on down.
Grandma and Grandpa are waiting.”

I wiped my eyes. “Okay.”

She shut the door behind her. I quickly threw on my clothes and, of course, my sweater.
While I was dressing, something outside the window caught my eye. A heavy white snow
had started to fall.
Dad’s snowfall,
I thought.

I reached the bottom of the stairs, and Grandma and Grandpa were watching me expectantly.

“Merry Christmas!” I said.

They furtively glanced at each other, no doubt wondering what had gotten into me.

“Merry Christmas to you,” Grandpa said.

Grandma came over and gave me a hug. “Good morning, sweetheart. Merry Christmas.”

“Eddie,” my mother said. “Did you see the sn—” She stopped before she finished her
sentence. She was staring at my sweater. “You really do like it.”

“Best present I’ve ever got.”

She looked the happiest I’d seen her in years.

“All right,” Grandma said, carrying over a platter piled high with pancakes. “Let’s
eat.”

As we took our seats around the table, I asked Grandpa if I could pray.

“By all means,” he said.

We took each other’s hands and bowed our heads.

“God, thank you for everything you’ve given us. For the time we have together. And
for the miracle of Christmas. Thank you for the Atonement, the chance to start all
over again. Help us to always remember who we are and to trust that we are worthy
to make it through our storms. Amen.”

As I looked up from the prayer, all the grown-ups were staring at me in wonder.

A few seconds passed before my mother finally broke the silence. “Dad, please pass
the pancakes.”

“Yes, dear.”

He passed her the platter, but, as usual, Mom served me first. “Here, Eddie.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m starving. That was one
long
night.”

Grandma gave me a puzzled look. “Long?”

“Eddie,” Grandpa said, “while you were up in your room sawing logs, a man came by
the house looking for you. Don’t remember his name, but he said he saw a boy about
your age out riding a bicycle. He wanted to make sure you were okay. I told him it
couldn’t have been you.”

“Because I was asleep?” I asked.

“Well, that, and because you
don’t
have a bicycle.” A wry grin crossed his face. “Then again, who knows? We haven’t
looked everywhere yet. Should we go on a hunt?”

I smiled at him. “We can wait, Grandpa. Everything I really need is right here.”

A broad smile filled my grandfather’s face, and his eyes shone. “Well said, Eddie.
Well said.”

Shortly after breakfast, Grandpa led us all out to the barn. He was more excited than
I was. With great fanfare, he unveiled the bike. Just as he himself had trained me,
I acted surprised. I thanked everyone profusely, compli
mented Grandpa on his fine taste in two-wheelers, and asked how he’d been able to
completely surprise me. In spite of my fine acting, Grandpa could tell that I’d known
about the bicycle. I knew it irked him, since he didn’t know how I could have found
out. It was better than beating him at cards—which, of course, I couldn’t have done,
considering that all of the hearts from his favorite deck were wedged into the spokes.

Later that afternoon, as the snow fell peacefully outside, I lay near the fire next
to my mom, listening to a Burl Ives Christmas record. She ran her long fingers through
my hair. “This has been the most wonderful Christmas,” she said wistfully.

“It has,” I said. “Just like old times.”

She laughed. “You’re only twelve, Eddie. You don’t have any ‘old times.’”

We both laughed. Then I said, “Mom…”

“Yes?”

“Thank you for all you do for me. For how much you work and change your schedule to
be with me.”

“How did you know I did that?”

“I just don’t say thank you enough.”

She looked at me and her eyes filled. “Do you know why I do it, Eddie?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my greatest joy, Eddie. You’re my joy.”

M
y grandfather’s full name was Edward Lee Janssen, and he was indeed my summertime
best friend. While the middle name on my birth certificate reads just “Lee,” I’ve
always insisted on using “Edward Lee” throughout my life. In fact, all of my friends,
and even my children, believe that “Glenn Edward Lee Beck” is my legal name.

I am “Eddie,” and I grew up in a small town called Mount Vernon, Washington. My mother’s
name was Mary, and she died when I was thirteen, not long after giving me a Christmas
sweater that I threw on the floor.

My grandparents were very much like those described in the book. My grandfather was
a great man and a great friend.

My father, though, was not missing in my life, as he was in this book. While he was
always there for me, he and I were never close until later in life, when I sobered
up, stopped feeling sorry for myself, and started to count my blessings. It was then
that I called my father and told him that I didn’t know how to be his son. He told
me that he felt the same way, but added that if I would promise to sit through the
awkward silence, we would figure it out. His words still bring tears to my eyes as
I write them today.

I did as he asked, and I am so proud that we survived the awkward silences. My father
has been the best friend I’ve ever had, and it has been the best fifteen years of
our lives.

Our family bakery really was called City Bakery, and my father really was more like
a craftsman than a baker. On a trip back home during the summer of 2007, I noticed
that Mount Vernon’s downtown was coming back to life. The mall that had driven shops
like ours out of busi
ness had been torn down and replaced with an even bigger mall. I didn’t go in; I’d
already seen malls exactly like it in a hundred other towns.

Russell is a compilation of several of my life’s most vital elements. There is a real
man named Russell (minus the sepia tone), who lived next door to my grandparents.
He has all the kindness and wisdom of a farmer who’s worked with his hands his whole
life. I decided to use him as a model for the character when, during that trip back
home, I visited the street where my grandparents lived in Puyallup, Washington. Russell
was still living next door, long after my grandparents had passed. He showed me a
willow tree that he had planted from a branch my grandmother had given him when I
was very small. It now shades his backyard.

Russell is also a grateful tip-of-the-hat to my dear friend Pat Gray. Many of you
have heard me talk of him often on radio, TV, and in my stage shows. I met Pat later
in life, and he guided me through some of my darkest days and gave me the greatest
gift anyone can give: faith.

But the biggest part of Russell came from a dream
that I had in my midthirties. The cornfield scene was real for me, as was the color
and warmth on the other side. It was sacred, and it completely changed my life. I
believe this is the reason, as I told you in the prologue, that the book wrote itself.

While I didn’t know at the time who Russell was in my dream, I feel that I do know
now. But who he is
to you
is something that only you can decide.

That dream and Russell are not just mine, and neither is the cornfield. We all find
ourselves there at some point. Yet I fear that far too many of us waste our lives
standing in that darkness and cold because we can’t put our past behind us and take
that first step into the unknown. We either don’t know, or don’t believe, that there
is beauty and happiness for us just on the other side of fear.

I am an alcoholic. I buried my guilt, pain, and feelings for so long that they would
have killed me if I had not had this dream. I only wish it had happened when I was
thirteen, like it did for Eddie.

Unfortunately, I had many more mistakes to make before I was driven to my knees and
finally pled, “Your will,
not mine.” I was in my midthirties and had been working on healing myself for more
than a year. I thought I was making good progress, but it turns out there were places
that I just wasn’t willing to go.

I was tired. Tired of soul-searching, tired of remembering, tired of looking at things
I’d spent a lifetime avoiding. Without consciously deciding to, I found myself willing
to stand in the cornfield with just a few answers because it was off the highway and
relatively safe. Yet, in retrospect, it was more.

I wonder sometimes how many of us don’t face ourselves because we are convinced that
we’re worthy of only a certain level of happiness. We are limited by our imaginations
and thoughts of worthiness and joy. We become comfortable in our misery because it
is all we know. Or maybe it’s just that we don’t look for the “real” us because we’re
afraid that there isn’t any real us to find.

One night I had a dream: The broken road. The dying cornfield. A storm unlike anyone
should ever have to witness with their own eyes. Nowhere to go.

Then an old, mysterious man showed me the way.

I woke from this dream at three o’clock in the morning and immediately went to get
my paints to try to re-create the scene on both sides of the storm. Despite my very
best efforts, I just couldn’t get it quite right. I have tried and failed many times
since. I wonder if even in this book I have really captured the coldness of the cornfield,
the true warmth of Eddie’s experience on the other side of the storm, and the light
of the stranger this book calls Russell.

Maybe it was never meant to be fully re-created. Just like in my dream, maybe we are
supposed to see only a hint of the message and messenger and leave the rest to faith.

In the final pages Eddie is given a second chance. That, my friend, is a gift to
me
and from
me
to
you.
It is the real gift that I now see as represented by that last present I received
from my mother. It is the understanding that you can be forgiven, that you can start
over, and that if you face your greatest fears and regrets, the sky will open up and
you will find happiness and love. It is the key to breaking the chain of regret and
misery.

My mom gave me the sweater, but the greatest gift was
given to all of us by a loving Father in Heaven. It is the only true gift ever given
to all and yet opened or appreciated by so few. It is the gift of redemption and atonement,
and it sits on the top shelf, largely untouched, in the closets of our soul.

At Christmas we celebrate the birth of the Christ child, but by doing so, sometimes
we miss the real meaning of the season. It is what that infant, boy, and then perfect
man did at the end of His ministry that makes the birth so special.

Without His death, the birth is meaningless.

For years, I didn’t believe in redemption as anything other than a word you hear from
a preacher. I didn’t think it was real. Even if it was, I didn’t think I was worthy.
That is a lie.

It is real.

It’s not just a word; it is a life-changing force. I am worthy.

You are worthy.

We all are.

I guess the real lesson I learned that last Christmas
with my mother was that the greatest gift is any gift that is given with love. I so
clearly remember the look in her eyes as she saw my sweater rolled up in a ball on
the floor of my room, and I remember realizing all that she had done for that gift.
I refuse to stand at His feet and see Him with the same look in His eyes as he asks
me, “Son, is that the gift I gave you?”

Pick up your redemption. Cherish it. Wear it. Share it. It has the power to transform
lives.
It has transformed mine.

I finally know
who
I am, and I am happy. As I write these final words in bed well after 2:00 a.m. just
outside New York City, I realize how many times I would have given anything to be
able to live back on that simple street. My grandparents and everyone else who lived
there still stand out as the most successful people I’ve ever met. They had everything
they needed, but, more important, they wanted everything they had.

For much of my life I fought with guilt over the way I treated my childhood sweater
and the events surrounding that Christmas morning. I could never give a sweater away,
no matter how ugly, old, or small it was. I clung to drawers full of them, in every
shape and size you can imagine.

Fortunately I got past that after I faced my storm. The old man in my dream was right
once again: It wasn’t as bad as I thought.

I eventually gave all my sweaters to Goodwill, and I am completely at peace with it.
I found that I didn’t need them anymore, because it’s so warm here….

It is just so warm.

Merry Christmas,
Glenn-Edward Lee-Beck