Oh, Christmas Tree

A note from a frustrated author. No matter how hard I try or how many hours–yes, hours–I spend trying to incorporate text and photos in a more imaginative way, I fail. What looks perfect in draft form morphs into chaos when posted. Is it possible that I will have to STUDY how to do this??

Yesterday, I put up a Christmas tree. I’m not sure why I did that. A stab at normalcy, I suppose, though in fact there’s nothing normal about it. Between our annual winters in Mexico and Christmas with out-of-town kids, it’s been a decade or more since there’s been an actual Christmas tree in the house. And is it normal to share a house with just a largish tree and a cat?

The tree itself is a beauty—harvested from a friend’s property, chosen in preference to its scraggly, deformed neighbour which my friend insisted was “more 2020”.

A few days ago I checked the attic for the tree stand, and was suddenly visited by memories of foul language and drill bits scattered around on the floor while I struggled with a tree that listed from side to side, needles digging painfully into my arms. I couldn’t picture doing it alone, so I sprang for a new stand. It says right on the box that it’s the last one I will ever buy, and I’m sure that’s true.

My granddaughter, Delaney—who gets off the school bus here—agreed to stick around and help with the decorating. My plan was to have the tree in its spiffy new stand, lights strung, fresh cookies waiting, Christmas music in the background. You get the picture.

The tree went easily into the stand—though it would have been easier to cover the art behind it with something Christmassy before setting it up.

And it isn’t the stand’s problem that the tree leans to one side—a flaw unnoticeable in the wild— though I tried to adjust it several times with the stand’s handy foot pedal. Eventually I managed to rotate it until it leaned into the corner, looking straight from most angles.

The lights went on with amazingly little trouble, a single strand with 100 lights, fresh out of an unopened box I found in the attic, leaving me time to throw together some cookies. When I returned from the kitchen, half the lights had gone out. It was beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

Twinge. The person who could probably fix it is no longer here.

So, when Delaney arrived, I tossed a couple of cookies at her and we rushed to the local hardware store for new lights. We came home with a 30-meter (98 foot) string of 300 LED lights. Not a string, exactly. More like a fine thread that we wound around and around the tree, at first carefully, and then in desperation, trying not to become entangled ourselves. I’m already trying to imagine untangling and detaching the lights at the end of the season.

Then the ornaments. And the memories. And a few tears.

The box hadn’t been opened in ten years, but there on the top, in place of honour, was the angel, and echoing over the years, the shouts of children. “My turn!…No, you did it last year…Did not. Did so…My turn this year–isn’t it, Mom?.” 

My job, apparently, was to remember who put the angel up twelve months ago and to share that memory with sufficient authority to settle the argument. There may have been bribery involved. This year, there was no argument. Delaney did it.

Of course, the box contained red and green balls, filagreed gold ornaments, various decorations acquired in anonymous places over the years. But among the more traditional ornaments, are some that required explanation.

“A dolphin? Is this a dolphin?” asked Delaney. Well, yes. Obviously. Who doesn’t have a dolphin on their Christmas tree

I don’t remember where the dolphin came from. But I clearly remember that the three little crocheted stockings arrived one year from my Aunt Sarah, one for each child with a five-dollar bill stuffed inside.

“What is THIS, Grandma?”

“Um…maybe a bumble bee?”

“Does it go on the tree?”

“Of course.”

I did choose to retire the toilet paper roll wrapped in coloured tape and the Styrofoam ball with remnants of sparkle.

Once the tree was up and decorated, Delaney and I stood back and gasped. Somehow, in the process of stringing the new lights or clambering up on a chair to settle the angel on high, the careful rotation to align the tree’s natural tilt with the corner of the room had come undone. The tree now stood listing awkwardly to the left. It was an easy enough job to spin it back…but a significant number of decorations spun with it, leaving a sparse surface facing forward.

No problem. As my kids will tell you, “fixing” the tree after others have decorated it is one of my longest-standing Christmas traditions. 

There were a few ornaments I saved to hang myself. Early in his career as a potter, Jack made Christmas ornaments. Nobody ever bought them. They were neither his passion nor his finest work, and he stopped making them after a couple of years. But I had a few in the ornament box, which I hung after Delaney left. Then I headed out to his studio to look for the rest. Always, when I open the studio door, I find Jack there in memories so powerful I am briefly overwhelmed. But I couldn’t find the ornaments anywhere.

I’m not sure what inspired me to have a tree this Christmas, this first Christmas alone. Is it somehow part of my grieving process?

But it’s up, and I’m sure that I will sit in the darkened living room, staring at the lit tree. I will remember Christmases with small children or small grandchildren, the bustle of wrapping gifts and the secrets whispered behind closed doors, the arguments over who got to hang the angel or whose stocking held more. I will reflect on all the years when those quiet moments in the dark, lit only by the tree, were a highlight of the season. I’m pretty sure I will cry.

It’s been a dark year for all of us. A bit more light can’t hurt.