While reds and greens are standard Christmas colours, blue ornaments, blue tinsel and blue lights have inexplicably been my favourite. And if ever I hedged on that, these blue lights sealed the deal.

Jimmy-D is a boy wonder. One of countless brilliant minds hidden in the cracks of our nation’s city streets and alleyways. Tucked away on the external side of an abandoned lakeside sawmill, his make-shift dwelling is a monument to ingenuity and street genius. Several times he had cooked me hot dogs using two nails and electrodes wired to 9 volt batteries. He kept a small space heater working on a timer via a car battery and re-jigged booster cables. And a string of ten blue Christmas lights were lit for five minute intervals on a WWII radio hand generator he bought at an army surplus store. Sad, beautiful blue bulbs that would slowly begin to fade as the juice ran out; an ironic metaphor for street life, too profound to miss.

One night while we roasted marshmallows over a wheel-rim fireplace, I asked him, “Why blue lights?” (Then told him they were my favourite.)

He answered with a soft smile, “Grandpa told me blue is the colour of depth… and everything deep in your soul is blue.” Grandpa was both artist and poet. And lifeline.

Jimmy-D’s grandpa died when he was twelve, just two years before Jimmy-D escaped his abusive home. A bright blue light in Jimmy-D’s soul.

God’s secret weapons in the fight for faith are warm grandpas and tender grandpas. There are more safe and loving memories and wise quotes from grandparents floating along curbsides in Canada than from any other source – including parents, peers, teachers and preachers.

We sat below the blue bulbs at brow level, weaved betweed skid-planks, and ate toasted marshmallows in silence. Between each roasting, he would lean over and re-hinge the hand generator’s handle and wind the bulbs to a brighter blue.

A few marshmallows and rewinds later, I asked, “What else can you tell me about your grandpa?”

Jimmy-D leaned into his shanty and rummaged around. And he handed me an old leather Bible. An old-school, Grandpa-looking Bible, with a cover that folded over the tissue-thin, gold-edged pages. He didn’t say a thing. He couldn’t. So he wound up the lights, opened the Bible on my knees and tapped his finger on the inscription.

In Grandpa’s lovely cursive writing, it read:

“My dear James, no matter what goes wrong in life, this will always be right. I will always love you – Grandpa.”

I read the inscription out loud. Then we sat in silence until the lights went out.

May your Christmas be filled with the depth of blue and what’s truly “right.”

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