Christmas

Today I decorated the tree. I've been bringing all my decorations into the house for the past two days and decided it was time to decorate, starting with tree.

As I unwrapped each ornament, I started remembering all the past Christmases. When I moved into my new house, I made a mistake by listening to a cousin who suggested that I start new in my new home. I had a new tree and bought maroon and silver balls for it. In my mind, it was beautiful.

It was, or should have been. As I started to go through all my old ornaments, I realized that I couldn't stop using them. There were so many memories, both new and old.

There were the ornaments my parents had given us for our first Christmas together and the ones that my husband and I bought for our first tree. There were the plaster trees, bells, animals, etc. that my boys had painted when they were 6 and 3 years old. Not professional, but priceless. There were the yarn dolls and pipe cleaner candy canes I made the year I became a mother and the balls my sister-in-law gave my second son for his Baptism. As I went further into the box, I found the ornaments painted by the boys in nursery school and cub scouts.

I even found some of the old glass balls and teapots from my parents' trees. They brought back the memories of playing colors with my cousins, Rita, Claire, Rose and my brother Frank. All but Claire are gone now, but those memories are fresh as ever. I look at the tree and think, "I see the colors green, pink, blue, white and gold." They someone would guess it was the multi-colored ball that I was looking at. Such fun, such good memories.

I have managed to collect almost so many memories over the years that I have expanded to three trees - the main one in the living room and one in each of the bedrooms.

How could I have possibly left them packed away for a showcase tree. A tree full of memories is the perfect tree.