It used to be a joke in our house that if anyone ever robbed us, they better go straight for the Christmas ornaments because that's where the money was.
It was only funny because it was probably true. With a nubby, dusty pink, 60's couch and loveseat that I won for a dollar at the local auction house and an old chicken incubator that I cleaned up and refinished for a coffee table, our furniture was eclectic, cheap, and generally used. My finest jewelry was Monet, our only silver was stainless, our TV's were won in raffles, and our computers were slow and secondhand.
Our Christmas ornaments, however, were bought new and sometimes at prices that I'd balk at spending for dinner for three at Denny's. Wrapped in tissue paper and packed in plastic tubs, they were prime for the taking in all but the last month of the year. In that month, they were brought out and put on full display, a sort of tactile history of our family.
At the height of our Christmas celebrations, we had enough decorations to cover three full size trees, two wreaths, two wall hanging trees, several table top trees, and one circular thing that hung from the ceiling and held ornaments that were too fragile or too heavy for the trees.
There wasn't a single plain round ball ornament among them. I take that back. In later years, there's been one red ball, a remnant of my parents' last tree which, as the years passed, was only reluctantly brought out and then decorated almost entirely with identical red balls.
It wasn't the tree of my childhood which is shown in photographs as being sparse of branches, long on tinsel, and with only a few ornaments, so that the tin foil covered milk container bell that I made in first grade stood out. Sometime after my sister and I left home, and over our objections, an artificial tree came in and the red balls went up. I don't know where they came from, and I don't know where my tin foil bell went. One red ball is its stand in.
Our ornaments are all different, each telling a story of a time or event in our shared lives. A beautician holding a hair dryer? That one's for Alex, documenting the year she insisted on getting a permanent and learned never to do that again. The shark with a little girl hanging from his mouth? That one's for Bess, who discovered an unhealthy fear of sharks while deep sea fishing during a Florida vacation and wanted off the boat, "Right Now!" The cat with a mouse hanging from its mouth. That's mine, given to me by my sister, who shares my phobic fear of mice. It goes on the tree, but always in the back. Waldo? Where's Waldo? He's there somewhere too.
This year while decorating, Bess sees me holding a little wooden ornament of a fisherman's hat. "Is that Grandpa's hat?" she asks.
"Why, yes it is."
I don't think my dad fished a day in his life, but he liked his hats. They were misshapen and discolored, with oil stains from his thinnng hair and black grime smudges from his work. He would leave them in restaurants on family vacations and we would drive back. We would buy him new hats for Christmas and birthdays and he would get around to wearing them, but never quickly. When he died, I think the grandkids took them. Maybe even wore them. I have my ornament.
"We should have one for Grandpa's green golf pants too." Bess says.
"Well, yes we should, but we don't. We do have one for his pink paisley shorts though. See, right there at the top. Next to the star you bought me with the date that I quit practicing law."
Truth be told, some of the ornaments are beginning to look a little worn. Not surprising, I guess, since many of them are over 30 years old and have moved through six different houses, four musty basements, two garages, and numerous closets. They've survived small hands of toddlers, sharp claws of cats, many a sniff from dogs, and several trees that fell in the night.
This year some of the survivng are even missing, gone in a box that I gave to Alex when she moved to Africa. She posted a picture of her tree on Facebook last week and it was nice to see that she had a little bit of home in that faraway place.
My favorite ornaments are the ones the girls made over the years and which, some years, have had there own tree. There are dough ornaments, mainly intact, but with a mouse nibble here and there. Tongue depressers with holiday greetings printed down the front. Paper cutouts, brightly colored. Pairs of little ice skates held together with a string of yarn and with paper clips for blades. Litttle names or initials (in crayon or marker, not always fully decipherable) on most, reminding me which daughter presented which ornament. Some have years, but more leave me guessing. Most I remember who made what, but memory fails a few.
Bess holds up a big snowflake, a full seven inches in diameter, cut out of plain white paper and them lamenated for longevity. It's been on one of our trees for 20 years, usually in a prominent place because of it's size and its lightness. Perfect for flimsy branches and bare spots.
"Who did this one, Mom?" she asks.
I take it from her, look at the back, see a small "B" and tell her that that one is hers.
She takes it back , looks at it more closely, apparently not remembering her little hands manuevering the blunt scissors.
"Mom. There are two initials here. It's not "B," it's "FB." I don't think it's mine."
I look again. She's right. I laugh. Bess joins in. We don't have any idea who made this ornament that we've been packing in tissue for 20 years. There's not a single FB in our family.
I reach up and put the snowflake in a prominent place on the tree, right next to Grandpa's pink shorts. There's a story behind the snowflake. Just not the one I thought.
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