The weather did permit students and faculty from the Southport Central School to go caroling around the school neighborhood last Wednesday, Dec. 21, but since I must send this column in by 4 p.m. on the Friday before Christmas, I have little additional news.

The storm forecast for most of the week has arrived and is in full swing as I type. Several times during the night the power blinked, but is still on.

Another storm has appeared on our doorstep, and it is not Santa in his sleigh. It is Covid. My husband, Kit, was transported to Miles Memorial Hospital this morning with symptoms that did not seem like Covid, but the test proved us wrong. Good-bye family Christmas. Hello a mound of books to read.

On that mound I found a book given by someone in Kit’s family named “Mary” to someone named “Jack” for Christmas 1922. In 1972 Kit’s stepmother passed the book along to Kit. I recommend you read it, even if you have read it before. Especially this Christmas it seems to me the best Christmas story.

“The Other Wise Man” by Henry Van Dyke is fiction, but with a lot of truth packed in. A wise man from the East has assembled his gifts for the Christ child, but is far away from his three friends with whom he plans to travel to Bethlehem. Running a little late he gathers his gifts and his travel garb, jumps on his horse, Vasda, and heads for their agreed meeting place. When he arrives, he finds his three friends have left, having given up waiting for him. The fourth wise man was late because he stopped to help a man lying across the road.

His hunt continues to Bethlehem, then on to Egypt, and then through the years until he finally is able to gaze upon the person he has been searching for executed on a cross. The story described the many people this fourth wise man has stopped to help along the way in his thirty-three year search. And it ends with this statement, “His journey was ended. His treasures were accepted. The Other Wise Man has found the King.”

And so may many of us, through helping others, find the purpose and love of our lives.