Thirteen years ago, basking in the newness of wedded bliss, my husband and I were excited to get our first, very own, ours, beautiful Christmas tree.
We were grown up. Finally.
Gone were the hideous ornaments of our youth. There would be no tacky, glittery reindeer hands hanging on our tree. It was going to be a pretty tree.
We scoured Pottery Barn sale racks looking for the perfect ornaments to hang on our perfect tree. We bought ornaments in odd numbers, as my designer husband did not want things to be symmetrical. We strung white lights, as these were mature, responsible, acceptable. No colored lights. Shudder.
Fast forward. 2012.
My, how our tree has evolved.
Colored lights! Not a single ornament matches! There are pipecleaner candy canes galore. Pictures of our babies in not-so-perfect light, with not-so-perfect faces adorn the boughs.
There are ornaments that recognize major milestones in our little world. The house ornament given to us when we bought our first, and only, home. The angel that hangs front and center, reminding us of some of the loss in our early marriage. The reindeer and snowflake taken from a childhood home. The golden circles that for so long hung on a grandfather's tree. The Dunkin Donuts coffee cup, that, upon hanging, brought me a torrent of tears, sadness and memories of a friend who's passed on, and a longing for that simpler life we had, when hurts were less, friends were truer, and confidence was more.
After the children finished up their minty hot cocoa and went to up to bed, we rearranged some of the clumps of ornaments that hung three feet up from the ground, in the middle of the tree, and moved some higher up, where little arms simply couldn't reach. And we stood back to look at our tree, proclaiming that this year, as we have every year before, this tree is the best one we ever had.
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