CHRISTMAS TREE

I have a problem with Christmas.

Maybe because it used to mean so much

Those memories are still so strong

Of laughter and shouts of joy

And now those I shared it with

Are mostly gone

Leaving me with the memories,

Good and bad.

Surprising how many are found

In little ornaments of glass, wood, plastic, and all.

There is a memory in a little red horse

That my father bought and used to quiet crying kids

On his knee when he played Santa.

He loved to be Santa

And have the kids on his knee.

A soft side that was not always easy to see.

And I have an old glass one in a very old style

That was my mother’s mother’s.

There’s a red wooden soldier that jumps

When you pull his string.

I bought it for my first tree away from home.

There are several that came from a kit

My girls painted when they were so small.

I have some that have dates on them.

There are a lot from old friends and from old trees

Of long ago.

More than a few once hung on my mother’s tree.

No one ever loved Christmas

More.

It is so hard to believe there have been eleven Christmases

Without her

And two grandchildren she never saw.

There are dozens of good memories that hang from the tree.

There is probably not a one

That does not bring back a particular Christmas

Or person.

Few of them match in color or style,

But they all have the same appeal.

In one, I can see the reflection of my mother’s blue eyes.

Another still smells of my father’s cigarettes.

One, I know was once held by my brother

Gone since I was nine and he was seven.

My Christmas tree would never make it is a department store

Window, but it is alive

With memories

It is bright with the lights of Christmases past.

That is Christmas to me.

The family part of Christmas.

The joy of the Lord’s birth is in a realm on its own.

I am speaking of the family, the blended family now

And the memories of all the Christmases past

Blended with the Christmas to be.

I think of all the trees those ornaments have hung upon.

All the gasps of joys they heard.

All the hugs they saw.

All of the last Christmases with this one or that.

And all of the times

They heard “Silent Night”

My tree is always covered with these bits of the past.

These Christmas joys.

They make Christmas alive to me.

And bring home so many who have been gone so long.

I look at my tree and know they are in the room.

I can stare at that tree and smell the powder my Mother wore.

And sometimes feel the way she hugged me

When it was time to go.

I can hear my father laugh until he would begin to cough.

I can hear my little ones’ glee as the wrapping paper flew.

I can hear the years fall away

And just for a moment, can still be there with them all

For a moment

Just for a moment.

I see it all in the lights of my tree

With memories hanging from every branch.

MFM

12/11/00

Home

N. Lauderdale, FL

6:10 PM