Early in December, my husband asked if he should bring up my mother’s Christmas tree. And, he suggested, why not put it in the corner of her family room, where she could see it all day long from her favorite TV-watching chair? Sounds good, I agreed. But I wasn’t expecting this full-sized tree. Since the move from Atlanta eight years ago, it had been lying forlornly in pieces in a back corner of her basement. With Mama’s approval, in years past I’d decorated a smaller table-top tree in her dining room. She had to make a special circuit around the house to see it, but she said it gave her a reason to take a walk. I thought the bigger tree’s days as a host for decoration were well in the past. But with a few adjustments and several new strings of lights, it was rejuvenated. When my mother came downstairs to find the tree opposite her cozy day-time spot, she was as happy as a well-loved child on Christmas morning. It was the prettiest tree ever, she declared.

The last time I’d decorated this particular tree was in December 2015, in my childhood home, for what was to be my father’s final Christmas.  After decades of good health and keeping fit, the years had finally begun to catch up with him.  The previous few months had been rough, with an illness and a hospitalization.  Neither he nor Mama felt up to the task of what had in the past been a beloved activity, so I flew to Atlanta for a short tree-decorating trip.  Daddy attempted no hanging of ornaments, but he sat near me as I worked.  He radiated a sense of relaxed contentment during those few days.  He watched with interest as I unpacked all the many old ornaments, each one familiar, most of them prompting an origin story.

There were the music-making pinecone elves on skis, purchased in the early 60s on a rare day-after Thanksgiving shopping trip with Mama’s sister and her family in St. Matthews, KY, near Louisville.  

There was the was last remaining unsilvered ornament from the war years, when metal was reserved for military use: a red blown-glass ball with a cardboard cap and paper string hanger.  

And there was Mama’s favorite decoration of all, the cardboard stocking covered in silver foil.  It had been bought by her dear brother when he was a boy, around 1940.  During my mother’s childhood, she had regarded Edwin, six years her senior, with absolute and wholehearted devotion.  His premature death at age forty-four, from complications of alcoholism, has been one of the great sadnesses of her life.  

There were the many homemade ornaments we created for our tree and as gifts: the clothespin toy soldiers, assorted animals sewn out of felt, and the pasta angels that Daddy himself made in the 1980s.  Shortly after his retirement, he embarked on an exuberant crafting phase.  Most years I get at least one texted photo from a friend showing one of our family-made treasures on their tree, with a note remarking on how it never fails to spark warm thoughts of both my parents.     

I don’t think there was a single Christmas ornament that Daddy didn’t appreciate.  I smile to think how he basked so cheerfully that day  in the glow of the lights, how he commented with such enthusiasm.   “This  little bear in a vest is the cutest thing! Here’s your Kindergarten bell!  I love this jack-in-the-box mouse you made!” He never lost his characteristic childlike delight in the beauty and charm of small things, nor his willingness to express it.  

Back home in Virginia, during every call home that Christmas season and well into January, both my parents thanked me for my decorating efforts.  “Your father has a favorite Christmas activity now, ” Mama told me.  “He sits by the tree, looking peaceful and happy.”  

 

*Did I return to take down the tree?  I can’t recall, but I fear that I did not.