Christmas

I really love Christmas.
I love the reason and I love the sparkle.
There simply cannot be too much sparkle for me, it transports me and brightens the overcast days. It brings warmth and magic to my days and evenings, increased by the reflection in the window panes. Sparkle and glimmers warding off the iced darkness that gathers just the other side of the glass. These months are cold but I am snug and aware that many creatures, more deserving than I, are not as fortunate. My blessings are many and counting them dulls any sting a disappointing day might try to leave with me. And I count sparkles among them.

I decorated my tree this afternoon. Outside a soft drizzle coated the trees with silver beads, shining against the deepening gloom. I was going to wait and do it with Rosie nestled on the couch doing her Arabic homework but she went to visit her sister after breakfast with my father so I decided to make myself useful and tackle it solo. The girls and I use to do this as a trio and lest you believe that all our memories are bright ones, let me acquaint you with our old Christmas tree decorating tradition...

The three of us would decide the day and go to the local Lion's Club lot where we would wander around looking for a tree that spoke to us. Being an egalitarian mommy, early on I suggested that we should take turns choosing a tree since we had difficulty falling in love with the same one. We would all get a vote, but the deciding vote was awarded to the person whose year it was to choose, the tree fairy as it were. At some point we added Courtney's friend, Naomi, into the mix because she is Jewish and wanted to have a go at a turn. Anyway, the girls usually wanted a sheared tree which I would try to sabotage steer them clear of as to my eye the ornaments needed to be stapled on the sides rather than draping elegantly from branch tips.

Once chosen, that is where the fun began. The three of us would make ridiculous attempts to toss our tree atop the car. Young men would stand around in a lump watching us tie miles of string in and out the car windows, back again around the tree trunk, over and over and through the branches, back in the passenger windows again and so on. I was not too preoccupied to inquire of my daughters the names of these louts so as to write their mothers a note on what a dismal job they had done raising their sons. My daughters, feeling oh so merry while suffering peer amnesia for fear I might actually follow through on my muttered threat. I never would have of course, but I felt better grousing and wishing them all the head colds and sprained ankles the season could bring.

So...off we would set for home with our prize! I never viewed us as limited because daddy wasn't here, wanting them to believe themselves capable of whatever they could dream up, so it never occurred to me to keep our tree to a modest size. It was love and joy in their hearts that would choose the tree, said I! Money and size be damned~it's Christmas! So invariably we would arrive home with a tree too wide to waltz in or too tall for the room but those were obstacles with which I could well deal.

There are, however, several trees that loom large in our memories, ones my children recall most vividly, the ones with the trunks many, many inches too wide for the stand. Out would come my Felco saw and I would begin to whittle. And slice my fingers and bleed and cry and mutter egregious oaths. My children came to call it "the swearing in of the Christmas tree" and we do not miss that part.