First Christmas Tree

I was just thinking of a story my mother shared with me a few years ago and it paints such a portrait of them both.  I wanted to share it while I was thinking of it -even though Christmas is not for a few weeks yet.  But this is a thanksgiving story I suppose.  For I am grateful for my parents and for what they taught me.  How to dream, how to be creative, how to leap before I look, and how to look before I leap.  Sometimes you need both skills.  I'm happy to say that I am both spontaneous and thoughtful.

My  parents were married in the early fifties - likely the tinsel that we decorated the Christmas tree with was made with lead  - I remember the feel and weight of it before it was plasticized.  Anyway, my mom tells this great story of their first Christmas tree.   I guess while they were putting up the tree, dad left the room for a minute and when he came back, she had all the tinsel on the tree.  In her fashion, she just threw it at the tree in giant clumps and let it land where it would - that is sort of the way she does everything, with joy and gusto.  My dad came back into the room and blew a gasket.  No, no, no!  That's not the way you do it!  He took every single cotton pickin strand off that tree and put them back on, one by one, exactly the same distance apart.  Perfectly.  I'm sure it took him forever to finish.  He has always been that way.

So I grew up in a home with a mother that just threw herself at everything she did with wild abandon, and a father that was calculated and systematic and orderly at everything.  This story paints a colorful portrait of the two of them.  And now, fifty some years later, they are still driving each other completely nuts -  still decorating the tree the same way.
Only now,
mom leaves the room.
:)

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