My Memory Tree
Each Christmas, despite the many years that have passed, I still can see my father carrying this huge, fresh, Christmas tree up five flights of stairs to our top floor apartment in the Bronx and that vision brings me back to being a little girl.
Maneuvering the over-sized tree into the apartment was always a challenge for him, compounded by my mother’s yearly lament that he had done it again by buying a too large tree.
Once it was in position in the living room, scraping the ceiling once more, he would reach up to hack off the too high top to leave room for an angel.
The scent of fir filled the room, transporting me to that beautiful place of holiday innocence that only the young, and young-at-heart, can know.
I remember lying on the floor beneath the tree, looking up to the ceiling with the lights twinkling around glass balls of different color and design, absorbed with the many blinking lights.
One ornament in particular caught my eye each year, one with a silver sparkle designed Christmas scene with the words “Christmas Eve” spelled onto it.
It gave me that special sense of connection to the tree that I felt each year.
It was a piece of the Christmas spirit given to me from the hard work of my Mom and Dad setting up this tribute to the season.
Once married, after our two-week October honeymoon, we came back to backlogs at our jobs that had us both working late into the night most nights.
Somehow, getting ready for Christmas never entered our minds.
My ever-thoughtful Mom gave us a small artificial Christmas tree for our small apartment in Queens, with some of her ornaments to fill it.
It wasn’t much, but it was Christmas.
We had our own Christmas tree.
Four years later we were expecting our first son around Christmas time.
Now submerged in the Christmas season, we bought a huge Scotch Pine tree and some ornaments, but even with the ornaments my Mom had given us, they were lost in the vast branches of the fresh tree in our living room.
My mother and mother-in-law, now much older and downsizing their own trees, came to the rescue adding ornaments to the ones we bought, helping to fill our first gigantic live tree.
Our first son was born on the day before Christmas Eve.
I was not at home with our new son until after the actual holiday, but that huge adorned tree was there to greet this tiny baby and me.
As I sat with him in my arms, rocking him to a gentle sleep, there was no light in the room but for the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree.
Surrounded by that familiar scent of the tree, I felt that same peace. I felt that same connection.
The spirit of Christmas was alive in the symbol of the tree, and I could feel us passing it on to our new child as I sang Silent Night as a lullaby to him.
The years went by.
Two years later another son joined our oldest son, followed by our daughter six years after that.
As they grew old enough to get into the rough-and-tumble age my husband and I stopped buying the fresh trees and got an artificial tree, which seemed a little safer with the little ones running around.
Through their growing years I decorated a large artificial tree.
The convenience of it already being there, the elimination of the cost of a tree each year, and the reduction of shed needles from the tree that always seem to spread throughout the house, and which never seemed to go away, were all factors.
What did carry forward each year, though, were the old family ornaments.
Added to those first ornaments were the new ones we bought each year and the ones our three children made in school for us.
After the three of them were adults out on their own, that artificial tree showed its many years of use.
Before we could order a new artificial tree, our son surprised us before Christmas by buying us a fresh tree as a gift because he knew how much I loved them, but how my husband and I could no longer carry one from the lot and set it up in the house.
It was huge!
He had to cut off the top, but unlike my Mom, I did not complain as tears of joy filled my eyes at the fond memories of my Dad returned to overwhelm me looking at our son making the tree fit.
Not as young as I once was, it took me a very long time to put on those ornaments saved over the years.
However, I would not let anyone else place them on that tree for me, because each year I receive a special gift by my taking more time.
Each ornament I hold in my hand takes me somewhere in my history.
I see my adult children back at school age, coming home so proud of their artistic attempts making an ornament.
The progression of their age shows in the quality of subsequent ornaments.
When I got to the remaining ornament, the silver sparkle still on it with the words “Christmas Eve” written on the glass ball, I gave it a place of honor near the top of the tree.
This was the most special one to me as a little girl, and luckily, this antique glass ornament has survived for all these many years.
This ornament is the one that brings me back full circle.
It is not as easy for me to lie down on the floor as I did as a child, but I did that year.
I stared up at the lights, with that one ornament still holding on to every twinkle of flashing of the lights, the scent of the tree caressing my senses, and my memory tree continued.
More years passed with me now returning to having a smaller five-foot artificial tree which I can maneuver on my own for Christmas.
Spruce scented ornaments hide within the branches to give my home the tree scent.
That Christmas Eve ornament still holds its place of honor with the other saved ornaments.
Many coordinate a Christmas tree to a theme.
Identical ornaments, color coordinated trimmings interspersed among the branches, a stylish statement of the interior design capabilities of its owner.
With new color schemes explored, picture-perfect Christmas trees line the stores and fill the houses.
I, however, will not change my traditional way of decorating the Christmas tree with its mix match variety of old, new, and homemade ornaments.