What heralded the season more than deciding which tree on the Booger Mountain lot would have the privilege of sharing Christmas with the Hardisons? of having our beloved ornaments--years worth of memories--hanging on its branches?
It was the start of it all.
It couldn't be too tall, or too skinny, or have a skimpy side. It had to have lots of sturdy branches because a lot of our favorite ornaments happened to be the heavy ones. (Isn't that always the case?)
Once the tree decision was made, Mom picked out her double-sided wreath for the storm door--never shall you see the naked backside of a Christmas wreath from inside the house. Then she'd go home and wire fruit around its center: so Williamsburg!
We were always more eager than Dad to get the tree up and decorated when we got back home. Dad said it needed to sit in sugar water over night. A ploy to buy a night or two before the manual labor of getting it in the house? I still don't know, but thanks, Dad, for the memory, and I'm sure as an adult, my tree will need some time to sit in sugar water, too.
We had an unchanging method for decorating the tree, of course. The lights first, then the beads, then we rummaged through boxes of ornaments to pick out the ones that belonged on display that year: always some of the wooden ornaments that mom and dad painted and used their first year of marriage; and the dough ornaments that Drew and I made, bearing pictures of our little five-year-old heads; the ornaments from Mama Bette, particularly the orange angel she got when mom was born; the sand paper gingerbread men and Drew's candy cane he made in high school woodworking class. These were Mom's ornaments. They are sitting upstairs in Mom and Dad's attic right now, as special and sentimental to me as the boxes of ornaments in my own attic.
Mom didn't want Drew and me to have to go out and buy our own ornaments once we got married, so years ago she started giving them to us every year for Christmas. As the years piled on, so did the ornaments. Every one I have is from her: kitty cats, angels, shoes, purses, stars.
Material objects full of life and love and her.
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| The Hardison tree |
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| 1988. Susan (6); Drew (9) |
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| 1997. Drew (18); Susan (15). Mom's Williamsburg wreath on the door. |
(Up next: Santa Claus and Christmas Eve!)
What great memories and traditions. Love reading this as it brings back memories of your mom always wanting a "real tree" because it filled the house with the pine smell that an artificial tree just did not have. I also loved the double-sided wreath!
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